Powerbook harddrive failure

[Semaphoric]

I have an old 12" Powerbook (1.5 Ghz/512 RAM/60 g) and the hard drive failed. I took it to a date recovery place and they said they couldn't retrieve data from the drive since it's complete crashed.

I would like to attempt to try retrieving the data from the drive myself, does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can do this? I've heard that sometimes if you put your drive in the refrigerator, it may revive the HD. Any tips?

Thanks.

 

[eyoungren]

I've heard that sometimes if you put your drive in the refrigerator, it may revive the HD. Any tips?

I tried that once. Actually put it in the freezer for a few hours. The drive spun up and I was able to access it. The problem was that the drive was so messed up that it would have taken about a day to recover all the data. The data was valuable but not irreplaceable so I pulled the plug.

Tried the same trick one more time a bit later and it didn't work. So, if you try it be sure you're ready to work because in my case I only got one chance.

 

[jbarley]

Try a Google search using terms such as "Freezer, Hard drive, problems", and you'll find links to others, some who claim success with this method.

 

[Semaphoric]

I tried that once. Actually put it in the freezer for a few hours. The drive spun up and I was able to access it. The problem was that the drive was so messed up that it would have taken about a day to recover all the data. The data was valuable but not irreplaceable so I pulled the plug.

Tried the same trick one more time a bit later and it didn't work. So, if you try it be sure you're ready to work because in my case I only got one chance.

How long did you leave the drive in the freezer for?

 

[eyoungren]

About 2.5 hours. The instructions I found mentioned an hour so I threw in an extra for good measure.

 

[max¥¥]

for the freezer trick put it in overnight, from my experience the longer you leave it in the better. I's a bit temperamental though, i had a drive which it diddn't work on, i put it in the freezer again and the it worked

(a random bit of info, after a lcs rebuild my g5 wouldn't boot, so i put the hole cpu assembly in the fridge over night, and guess what, it worked (The actual problem was that there was too much thermal paste on one cpu)