30 Dec
2004
30 Dec
'04
7:13 a.m.
Neil Breeden wrote:
Bob,
I've seen this work with IDE drives that wouldn't spin up due to bad
bearings.
Freeze the drive in your freezer then spin it up while it's still frozen.
This seems to free the bearings for a short time so the drive can spin up.
I know of a couple people who used this technique to copy the contents off a
dead drive, they required several freeze passes to get all the data as the
drive tends to warm up quickly once pulled from the freezer and powered up.
The speculation has been that the metal contracts when frozen and releases
stuck bearings, this has always seemed an
'Odd' explanation as the bearings and races should contract at the same rate
assuming similar materials.
Bearings and races are almost never the same alloy. Even with
journal bearings, where the race *is* the bearing, one peculiarity of
solid geometry is that the larger torus contracts to a different degree
than the smaller.
Damned if I can remember which contracts more, though.
Doc