I spent a year as a Computer Forensics consultant for Protiviti and whilst there I heard a rumour (from Pat Beardmore I seem to remember) that if you have a hard drive that seems to have packed up, then by putting it in the freezer for a while sometimes gets it working again.

So, I was given a computer to have a look at as it had packed up, and whilst 2 drives worked, the third, system hard drive, was fried.... So I put it in the freezer (in a plastic bag to keep it from getting wet) and a few days later when cooking dinner, I found it, and tried it out. To my great suprise, it actually worked!

I got the personal data off, and tried to image the drive to get more data in future if needed. Unfortunately, the imaging failed towards the end (3 hours!) and the drive stopped working. It's now back in the freezer so I can have another go at imaging it when it comes out again.

I'm not sure why this worked, Perhaps it was just sheer coincidence?! But I imagine it to be something to do with the temperature of the hard drive when spinning up - as normally it makes this horrible clicking noise, and cant be read - maybe freezing it made the read heads change shape ever so slightly and correctly align them.. perhaps they had been warped by heat. Or perhaps the logic board has a loose connection that needed contracting back into place by the cold... I would be interested to know why this works!