Putting a HD in a freezer
Sounds like an old wives tale, why not just wrap it in cheese cloth and bury it in your backyard until the 22nd day of ramadan..
I tried to search for articles that explained my POV, with illustrations to boot..
This was a really good article,
"Do it Yourself Hard Disk Repair"
Eric Shufro - 10/2/02
"
Carefully squeeze this piece of plastic gently, but use a moderate amount of force to lift it off its mounting pin. It takes some effort, but it will come right up. Be careful! Both this plastic device as well as the one in the next step are both very fragile and can break easily if squeezed too hard!
Next, remove the head stop mechanism, located as shown in the picture just above. Again, squeeze gently and lift it straight off of the pin.
Gently slide the head off the platter. It will sit nicely in the air without the platter underneath it. DO NOT touch the heads with your fingers or any other material. This may damage them. "
<really nice photos here, I would like more tuts like these>
http://www.overclockers.com/tips1035/
The date might be old, but the idea and principles behind his methods are sound, also, he has decent pics to explain his tut. The idea is removing, testing, and replacing various parts of the hd, with another.
another one thinks differently, with lots of caution.
"The first thing is that in his view, about 85% of the dead drives are due to software, not hardware. This can be fixed with a bunch of tools, mounting in a different OS, using a LiveCD, or simply trying it in a different version of the OS itself. There are tons of tools, ranging from really expensive to free to help you..
The other 15% is mechanical, and that is where the problems come in. 10% tends to be the electronics on the bottom, 4% are the heads or platters, and about 1% is the motor."
"Overall, fixing a hard drive comes down to software tools, and then rarely hardware swaps. If it is hardware, then you are usually looking at a board swap, and barring that, things get messy. In any case it is doable to fix things yourself, but be prepared to break a few drives. "
"The problem is that those electronics tend to change on a regular basis, be it the PCB and components, or the firmware, and it does so without any warning. Because the drive is a self-contained unit, who cares what happens on the inside. If you are going to swap PCBs, you need a drive date coded within two months of the dead one, less if you want to be safe."
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/ ... hard-drive
Each computer failure is unique and there are always several solutions to repair the problem. The hacker mindset is always to explore, to take something apart. This also explains the benefit of being a packrat, with some product loyalty - old parts might be interchangable or useful...
DNR
.
thou shall be redundant. 
