<html><head><style>body{font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px}</style></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;"><br></div> <br> <div id="bloop_sign_1474485667756603904" class="bloop_sign"></div> <br><p class="airmail_on">On September 21, 2016 at 14:05:58, Dan Kaiser (<a href="mailto:dank2878@gmail.com">dank2878@gmail.com</a>) wrote:</p> <div><blockquote type="cite" class="clean_bq" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><span><div style="word-wrap: normal; word-break: break-word;"><div></div><div><table class="container" lang="container" dir="ltr" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" valign="top" style="width: 745px; margin-top: 6px;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" class="message-wrapper" style="line-height: 1.31; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><div>I can't speak to local services, but I have been able to wrap a failing HDD in paper towel and then ziplock bag and freeze it for a while. Once cold I was able to get it to spin up just long enough to recover my files. I've only had about 50% success rate with that trick, but might be worth a shot.</div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></span></blockquote></div><p>The conflict is that with a near-dead or dead drive you only usually get one shot, if that. What one thing are you willing to do?</p><p>If the data is important, I'd consider how much I was willing to pay to ship it to a professional house that has a clean room, etc. If the data is kind of meh, I might try the freezer trick. However, the freezer may make the bad problem completely impossible by freezing moisture that exists inside the drive (depositing solid ice crystals onto and into components), or worse -- that frozen moisture turning into water inside and outside of the drive as it melts.</p><p>Makes me wish Adam and Jamie had tried various home-remedy and professional drive recovery tricks on Mythbusters.</p></body></html>