What happens when you freeze a hard drive?

What happens when you freeze a hard drive to attempt data recovery?

This blog shows the devastating effect of freezing a hard drive in an attempt to recover data.

Searching the internet (2015) it is amazing to find advice and alleged success stories of end users freezing their hard drive to retrieve information held on a failed hard disk drive.

Hard disks are engineered physically to the extreme end of the available engineering envelope using state of the art equipment and technology; the head stack assembly operates at sub micron tolerances and at extremely small signal levels, freezing the disk will not help in any way, and as you can see in the picture can cause significant damage to the internal components of the drive.

The hard drive shown in this blog came into our labs, just look at the damage the residue of water has caused.

Freezing a hard drive for the potential recovery of data is not a good idea as you can see here!