Older drives typically used 12-20 data surfaces and their physical dimensions were much bigger, so even slight alignment differences were exaggerated, compared to today's models that rarely use more than six surfaces, and are much, much smaller."ģ. Drives from 15 years ago used dedicated servos, where only one of the heads on a head stack was used to align the entire head stack, so the stack was very vulnerable to even microscopic changes in orientation. "But the modern servo is much better at making self-adjustments. "Freezing the drive could theoretically return the head stack to its original orientation," Reinert said. Heat from the drive can cause elements in the head stack to expand, putting the drive out of alignment. The head stack is the assembly that controls the movements of each read/write head in a hard drive. A white paper from Hitachi discusses the benefits fluid-bearing motors bring to hard drive designs.Ģ. Reinert also noted that nearly all modern drives use fluid-bearing motors which produce less friction, and therefore less heat than ball-bearing motors."Ī drive that's been around for several years might still be using a ball-bearing motor, but most drives sold in the past few years use a fluid-bearing system. That said, modern drives use far fewer components on the PCB than before, which means less heat and fewer individual points of failure. When the drive is put in the freezer, the materials shrink back to their normal orientation and the connections are reliable (until the circuit board heats up again)."Įlectronics failure is the most likely symptom to be addressed by freezing a drive, since chilling the electronics can delay thermal expansion of weak solder joints. "In some cases, this can cause the solder connections on the circuit board to be unreliable. "The chips on a circuit board (PCB) and the motor in the hard drive itself generate heat, and most materials expand slightly when heated," said Reinert. I'll list three technical reasons that freezing a malfunctioning hard drive might fix it, along with Reinert's thoughts about why this practice might not be a good idea any more.ġ. According to Reinert, freezing a faulty drive might have been beneficial once upon a time, but is no longer recommended.
#Wd drive utilities crash software
So I contacted Jim Reinert, vice president of data recovery and software products at Kroll Ontrack. Jim ReinertVP of data recovery and software products, Kroll Ontrackīut why would putting a crashed hard drive in a freezer revive it? I figured the people who might know the answer to this question would be the folks who perform data recovery for a living. Buying a new drive is much cheaper than trying to recover data from a failed one.When the drive is put in the freezer, the materials shrink back to their normal orientation and the connections are reliable. Back up your data and replace your hard disk – hard drives are incredibly cheap nowadays.
In fact, if you are aware enough of potential computer problems to run hard drive diagnostic software, you’ve already won half the battle. It is an effective, quite safe and easy-to-use software. You’ve already backed up your hard drive! If you suspect an upcoming hard drive crash or a bad disk surface error, back up your data immediately – don’t fiddle round with installing hard drive diagnostic software until you’ve done this important step.Īnd if you are going to speed up you HDD, you can use Auslogics Boost Speed.You don’t know the manufacturer of your hard drive and aren’t confident of taking apart your computer to find out.You have already run chkdsk, and are still experiencing serious problems that make you suspect disk surface errors or imminent hard drive failure.Use third-party software for hard drive diagnostics if: There are also freeware utilities available on the web that will let you know when your hard drive is about to fail. Here are the hard drive diagnostic utilities available from some popular hard drive manufacturers: You can find the tools on the manufacturer’s website – they will help you diagnose problems with the disk surface and generally check the HDD. The manufacturer of your hard drive will also have their own proprietary tools for doing hard drive diagnostics. Hard drive utilities from the manufacturer One of them is PassMark’s DiskCheckup™ tool. This hard drive diagnostic tool looks for evidence of impending mechanical failure, and can also tell you if a recent bump or power failure has created any potentially harmful hard drive errors. – Self-Monitoring and Reporting Technology. Most modern hard drives are equipped with S.M.A.R.T.
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