Posted 08/16/2007 at 01:30:51pm

It was definitely the most ridiculous troubleshooting step I had ever heard when Maximum PC first mentioned freezing my hard drive, but I am pleased to report that it worked for me. About a year ago, I was formatting my laptop and had backed up all my data to my iPod. The format went well, but when I went to restore my data, my iPod decided it no longer wanted to co-operate and would do nothing but display the sad iPod icon. While almost paralyzed by my horror, I was able to recall a tip I read in the magazine about freezing my hard drive. Having no other recourse to recover my data, I decided to give it a shot. I sure am glad that I did because after an hour of freezing the iPod worked successfully for about 7 minutes. After almost a full day of this freeze/restore cycle I was able to recover all of my data. On a slightly related note, any suggestions for a hard drive that died unexpectedly, with no warning and now isn't even being detected in the BIOS? I have tried the drive in another computer with different cables and it isn't making any unusual noises.