Who would have thought that the dreaded click of death could be fixed by freezing your hard drive? I was quite skeptical to start, but when I did a quick google search and found an article about freezing a hard drive to recover data and reading the comments from people who tried it, it seemed to be a credible option to try out.

My Experience

I had an old 80 gig hard drive that when I booted it up, it would continuously click. This syndrome I was quite familiar with as Iomega Zip Drive’s in the early 1990′s would stop working with the dreaded click of death syndrome. The recommended minimum freezing time was 4 hours,  popped the drive into the freezer for 3 hours and with a $15.00 hard drive to USB connector (SATA/IDE to USB connector), connected the hard drive in Windows XP. Low and behold as the drive booted up, NO CLICKING! none whatsoever. It took a second for the drive to thaw and slowly spin right, but finally a drive letter appeared and there were my files! Files I had given up retrieving about 6 years ago.

How to do it!

1) Buy an IDE/SATA to USB connector  ($15.00)

2) Freeze your drive for a minimum of 4 Hours

3) Have a plan on where you will copy the files
(you can only copy files while the drive is still frozen)

4) Connect hard drive to USB connector, connect power to USB connector. Hard drive will spin.

5) Copy your files and enjoy!