Chances are you've been a direct witness to a hard drive crash sometime in your life. You may not have recognized it, but that moment when your computer fails to boot up can be a scary moment indeed.

Newer hard drives have mechanisms inside that prevent the recording heads (mounted on actuated arm) to "stick," or be stuck inside while those precious, data-filled discs spin away happily. Hard drive recovery services are generally very good, but can be very expensive. If you have an older hard drive that you just must get data off of, ever hear of freezing it?

That sounds harsh, and I can't vouch for its validity, but in this scenario, freezing a drive made some clicks inside the drive louder. We normally would associate this to a drive with a worsening level of health. Okay, freezing didn't work...how about boiling?

Try this at your own risk, since the process sounds a little odd considering you have a marvel of engineering sitting there beside you. Would you boil a floppy disk? I wouldn't. But, using this "double boiling" method of 'repairing' a hard drive, this user was successful in at least getting access to his data so it could be backed up. If you try this, please let us know how it goes in comments.