Author: Ricky Lim

Here was a real life situation I was in. I worked as a IT support staff and one day a laptop that crashed was handed to me. After some diagnostics, I found bad sectors on the hard disk and a lot of clunging sounds whenever I turned on the laptop. Unfortunately, the user have some crucial data on the hard disk and need to have it in 24 hours.

The BIOS wasn't able to detect the hard disk. So I did some searching on the internet and found a real crazy way to recover the data. So, I decided to put it to the test since I have tried other ways to recover the data without success. I remove the hard disk from the laptop and put in the refrigerator!

Now it's important you do not put the hard disk in the refrigerator for too long. I put it in for about 30 minutes and then quickly attached the hard disk to an external hard disk casing and connected it to another computer via the USB port.

Surprisingly, it worked, the hard disk was detected and I copied the crucial data that the user needed to the computer as fast as I could.

I have done this a couple of times since then and it does worked. However, I found it will only work for a brief period of time. Usually, you will have a period of about 15 to 20 minutes so you need to copy as fast as possible to your computer once the hard disk is working.

Somehow cooling the temperature of the hard disk helps a lot. Here's another tip that I found. You can try tilting the hard disk sideways or at an angle about 60 degrees downwards. I found that by doing this, I can prolong the period by another 10 minutes or so.

However I like to caution you that only try this method when all other methods of recovering the data fails. There is a chance the hard disk is permanently damaged if it is in the refrigerator for too long.

Also, this method will only work if your hard disk is still spinning when powered up. If your hard disk does not spin and is dead in the water, then this method will not work.

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The major hard drive manufacturers have all decided to back Hybrid drive technology which employs NAND flash memory as an enhancement to their rotating media devices. All spurred by Microsoft's ReadyDrive initiative for the Vista operating system. They've formed the Hybrid Storage Alliance.

The objective of the technology is to provide near instantaneous booting of a PC. The 2 to 5 minutes it takes for a PC to boot and the operating system to be ready to accept commands has long been a deterrent for integrating the PC into a home entertainment system. It's also been a dream of many PC owners as well as software and hardware manufacturers.

Hard drive technology has changed over the years in terms of speed and capacity through variations in recording methods, heads, rotation rates, mediums and interfaces. But the actual technology has remained curiously the same. Media rotates. Heads "fly" over the media to charge and discharge properties of the media. We need a motor to rotate the media and a mechanism to move the heads across the media. The technology is over 50 years old and is such an archaic system in comparison

Hard disk drives are deeply entrenched in the technology we use. Not only are they used in personal computers, but you'll find them in digital video recorders, cameras, and media players. It may surprise some to know they can be found in ATM's and various other odd places. Hard drives are so entrenched in technology it's akin to the automotive industry and petroleum. The vicious cycle of support and reliance can blind and bind an industry.

Further, hard drive technology is inherently flawed. The actual media itself contains defects that are "mapped-out" during the manufacturing process. Hard drives consist of moving parts that are subject to failure. We all know that if it moves, it'll wear-out eventually. Hard drives are the weakest link in PC technology. They fail with age or mishandling and are slow compared to other available technologies.

It's past time to advocate a change in storage technology that will support longevity, reduce fragility and increase speed. Hybrid drives are a step in the right direction, but they don't eliminate the problems associated with hard drives. The step the manufacturers are taking this year could lead to a completely NAND based storage device. It's nice to hope anyway. Will it also be the death of rotating media in hard drives? In the long-run, maybe. Will we miss it? No!

Evolution in technology is an inevitability. Processors get faster and smaller. USB has replaced serial and parallel ports. DVD's are replacing CD's, which will soon be replaced. We weren't this slow in replacing card readers and magnetic tapes! Replacing hard drives that use rotating media seems to be a logical progression in the evolution of technology that no one should miss when it's gone. That is unless you miss XT's, monochrome monitors, DOS, or dinosaurs.

Q: I have a Dell Latitude D820. Unfortunately it as got only 60GB hard disk SATA drive. I want at least 120 GB hard disk drive because it is not sufficient for running all my study related programs. I am planning to change my hard drive. I have installed Windows Vista Ultimate and some other programs for my studies. I don't want to lose them. I can reinstall them later also, but only as a last option. Using an external hard drive for the OS is ruled out. Is there any way by which I may be able to copy my entire hard drive to another hard drive with more capacity to be used in the same computer??? I mean the whole Vista OS should be usable after the entire hard drive is copied. No critical reason. Just that I don't like the idea of using an external drive. For "thedeath" I have mentioned that I am going to use the new hard drive on the same system as a replacement for the old drive. So I think the issue for system compatibility does not arise. Does it?

A: There is no way within Windows itself to transfer Windows and apps to a new hard drive. You would need to use a third party program such as Norton Ghost or Drive Image. They allow you to clone hard drives. The problem you will have is that to clone them, you have to have both drives attached to the computer at the same time, or you have to have room enough to make a complete backup your hard drive. If you are running out of space on your 60G drive, you probably do not have room to make a full back up on it. So you would have to find a way to attach the 120G without removing the 60G. Best method is to use a USB enclosure. You put the 120G into the special case and then attach it as an external drive, do the clone, and then swap it into the laptop. The 60G drive can then be put into the enclosure, formatted, and used as an external hard drive for file storage and backups.