Hard Drive Data Recovery
2003-07-30

This drive would be recognized by the BIOS and would partially work (access files) until it warmed up (about 1 to 3 minutes).  When warm, the system (BIOS) would not even see the drive.  My thought is that one of the chips on the drive was heating up too much to work properly.  Since the drive contained information that would take longer than 1 to 3 minutes to copy off I decided to cool the chips to see if it would remain operating while the information was copied off (it did).

Shown in the pictures is a block of dry ice (larger than I needed - but I didn't bother to break it down) sitting atop of the drive - cooling the chips.

In the picture below, in the circled area, you can just barely see the dry ice fumes flowing




The dry ice is starting to freeze the humid air and is forming a layer of frost







The drive case is frosting a bit




After pulling the dry ice block from the drive (data copied off / project complete).  The chips were rather cold.
One item I did not anticipate - but will plan on for next time - is the condensed water that formed on the computer case.




Quantum 20GB