Category: technology & science

Came home last night to find my external hard drive unresponsive. It was making the dreaded clicking sound.

I used it primarily for backups, but there were still a few important files on it — archived Media Center videos, MP3s and some pictures.

I had read about people freezing their hard drives as a way to restore them temporarily.  I decided it give it a try.

I stuck it in a ZipLoc freezer bag and placed it on top of the Minnesota corn in the Cool-Whip container in my deep freeze.

After about an hour, I took it out and hooked it up. No change.  I stuck it back in the bag and put it back in the freezer.

So I get it out this morning and hook it up. Click. Click. Click. Whirrrrr. Click. Click. Sigh.

Then surprisingly, I heard this.

Boom, it was back. I frantically copied off about 3 GB of data. Not a hitch. Couldn’t believe it.

EDIT: This method does not work on newer hard drives with hydro dynamic bearings. It also does not work for all types of hard drive failures.

This is welcome news.  Now if they can get some competition going to drive the prices down.

I would bet there’s a fairly large rural market for broadband internet service.  Even if this pushes the traditional DSL and cable providers into the rural areas, it’d be good for country dwellers like my parents.

Here’s another nice write-up on some more Google searching tricks.

I can’t get enough tips to help me hack through superfluous search results.

I’m up to 240 MB of e-mails stored in my Gmail account.    I’m feeling the urge to clean stuff out.  There’s no sense in keeping my eBay “You’ve been outbid” e-mails, you know?

I posted earlier about some Google filter tricks.  Well, here’s a nice write-up from last year on some hidden labels that you can use.

“Label:sent has:attachment” has been particularly helpful.

Nice write-up here on how to get the most out of Gmail filters.   I should do more of this kinda thing.