I have been reading across various articles on data recovery over the internet and suddenly I came across one document, which had some funniest suggestions for recovering data from hard drive, which is experiencing physical crash. For people who do not know what physical crash means, check previous entries of my posts.

I will try to highlight some of the suggestions given in that document. The most interesting part of the document was that one of the data recovery companies has released it.

Table of contents had these topics

Freeze it, Drop it, Hit it

• Hold the drive upside down, making gravity change the head geometry ever so slightly. Vertical is also another option.
  
  
• Slightly rap the drive with your knuckle, (but nowhere near hard enough to damage the drive).
  
  
• Try the drive in another machine, (slight drive voltage change assumed the miracle worker here).
  
  
• Rap the drive just SLIGHTLY harder than you did above in 2.
  
  
• Freeze the hard drive in the freezer for two hours, and place in a plastic zip lock bag to prevent condensation from forming on the drive when you plug it back into the system, (head geometry, electrical resistance lowered, electrical contact points adjusted, etc., assumed the miracle here).
  
  
• After the drive warms up to room temperature or better, rap it even harder with your knuckle this time.
  
  
• Repeat all of above steps on next day, as sometimes I have gotten data off drive simply by trying again.

Well after the miraculous attempts suggested above I am sure the drive must have been died, most probably drive would not be having any mechanical or component failures. Freezing the drive might be a good idea, but the refrigerator in home is complete no no.

Warning: Please do not try and the steps explained above, if you have a drive that is experiencing physical problems, it is advisable that you should consult a professional data recovery companies such as Disk Doctor Labs Inc, Ontrack and drivesavers.