Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked!

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by DXMage

I would say on 25 that you can't really use a hard drive with out software that the hard drive manufactures cheated and should go to prison =)

26 and 27 are not entirely accurate.

26. On older drives where the bearings are not fluid and worn out the method has worked on more than one occasion (four different customers) . It isn't required to freeze the drive either. Only to get it MUCH cooler than normal. This is also is helpful with drives that are failing to recalibrate properly, you get a little more time cooling the drive down significantly. Again it isn't required nor recommended to freeze them. But if you are having issues getting data off the drive and you don't want to spend a thousand bucks on getting the data off it is certainly worth a shot and has worked for me. Cooling the drive to 40 degrees Fahrenheit should be a good start point.

27 Actually Google did a study on this and found that cooling the drives beyond a certain point caused failure rates to increase slightly research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf The thing here is that at temps over 40c the failure rate shot up significantly at least at the three year mark. The report also mentioned that certain brands have a higher failure rate but Google wouldn't state what brands those were.


Over all a pretty good read.

Thanks!! Will check out #26. As for #27, I've seen that study as well. Will relook into it as well.

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by Outcast

Hi and Happy Holidays!

Just a quick question/myth, does cloning hard disk reduce lifespan?

Short answer - no. Thanks for the myth. Will add that to the guide.

[Grave]

let me debunk the myth 25's myth :D
hope you learn something new today because in IT the old and outdated knowledge is useless, you have to learn everyday :)

Because the SI prefixes strictly represent powers of 10, they should not be used to represent powers of 2. Thus, one kilobit, or 1 kbit, is 1000 bit and not 2^10 bit = 1024 bit. To alleviate this ambiguity, prefixes for binary multiples have been adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) for use in information technology.


In December 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the leading international organization for worldwide standardization in electrotechnology, approved as an IEC International Standard names and symbols for prefixes for binary multiples for use in the fields of data processing and data transmission. The prefixes are as follows:

[code]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Prefixes for binary multiples
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Factor Name Symbol Origin Derivation
2^10 kibi Ki kilobinary: (2^10)^1 kilo: (10^3)^1
2^20 mebi Mi megabinary: (2^10)^2 mega: (10^3)^2
2^30 gibi Gi gigabinary: (2^10)^3 giga: (10^3)^3
2^40 tebi Ti terabinary: (2^10)^4 tera: (10^3)^4
2^50 pebi Pi petabinary: (2^10)^5 peta: (10^3)^5
2^60 exbi Ei exabinary: (2^10)^6 exa: (10^3)^6
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Examples and comparisons with SI prefixes
one kibibit 1 Kibit = 2^10 bit = 1024 bit
one kilobit 1 kbit = 10^3 bit = 1000 bit
one mebibyte 1 MiB = 2^20 B = 1 048 576 B
one megabyte 1 MB = 10^6 B = 1 000 000 B
one gibibyte 1 GiB = 2^30 B = 1 073 741 824 B
one gigabyte 1 GB = 10^9 B = 1 000 000 000 B
[/code]

more at Definitions of the SI units: The binary prefixes

Historical context*
Once upon a time, computer professionals noticed that 2^10 was very nearly equal to 1000 and started using the SI prefix "kilo" to mean 1024. That worked well enough for a decade or two because everybody who talked kilobytes knew that the term implied 1024 bytes. But, almost overnight a much more numerous "everybody" bought computers, and the trade computer professionals needed to talk to physicists and engineers and even to ordinary people, most of whom know that a kilometer is 1000 meters and a kilogram is 1000 grams.

Then data storage for gigabytes, and even terabytes, became practical, and the storage devices were not constructed on binary trees, which meant that, for many practical purposes, binary arithmetic was less convenient than decimal arithmetic. The result is that today "everybody" does not "know" what a megabyte is. When discussing computer memory, most manufacturers use megabyte to mean 2^20 = 1 048 576 bytes, but the manufacturers of computer storage devices usually use the term to mean 1 000 000 bytes. Some designers of local area networks have used megabit per second to mean 1 048 576 bit/s, but all telecommunications engineers use it to mean 10^6 bit/s. And if two definitions of the megabyte are not enough, a third megabyte of 1 024 000 bytes is the megabyte used to format the familiar 90 mm (3 1/2 inch), "1.44 MB" diskette. The confusion is real, as is the potential for incompatibility in standards and in implemented systems.

[siberx]

Originally Posted by ElBeano

Edit: I know I am resurrecting this post from the dead a bit, but I just saw this article linked to off of a website I frequent and had something to add.

Great article, but I'd like to add a little note here as well to help out...

The "myth" about freezing a hard drive isn't really a myth at all... I've personally had it work for me before and can point you to other articles and personal stories stating the same thing. Why it works I can't exactly say myself, other than re-iterating some of the other reasons I've read that have made sense.

It's not a cure-all by any means (in fact, it's a low success rate, last resort trick), and based on what you posted, it probably isn't good for newer generations of hard drives either... but it definitely can work, and it is worth a try if you aren't planning on paying a professional to recover the data and are about the chuck the drive anyways. Just throw it in a zip-lock bag and leave it in the freezer for a while, remove the drive and attach it to an external enclosure, and cross your fingers!

Here is a sample article sharing a success story:
geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

I would have also considered the "freezing trick" a myth myself - if it weren't for the fact that I'd successfully used it many times in my work to recover data from hard drives. I do tech repair at a computer store, and myself and my fellow employees have all found that cooling a drive down in a fridge/freezer can, occasionally, allow the drive to read for short periods to recover data.

As ElBeano mentions, it is by no means a sure-fire fix, but I can guarantee it does occasionally work and allow an otherwise dead hard drive to perform some recovery before it warms up again. My best guesses as to the reason behind it lie with either cooling of nearly-failed chips on the controller board allowing them to operate stably for short periods, an expansion/contraction situation altering contact somewhere, or the lowered temperature altering the magnetic domains/alignment on the platter and permitting easier reading.