OK let me explain the "Freezer" trick....
There are several ways that a hard drive can fail. One is that the small arm that moves the read/write head over the platter fails - it becomes stuck or damaged. When this happens the symptom is that you will get a loud "clicking" noise coming from the drive, a.k.a. "The Click Of Death". The freezer trick works ONLY for this particular problem, so if you dont hear a click it will probably be a waste of time.
Odds are that when you hear this click, you are hosed. But SOMETIMES you can get the head start working again, briefly, through the freezer trick.
First, remove the drive from the computer. You will want to then set up a second computer, or install and set up a new boot drive in place of the old damaged one. You may only get a few minutes of functionality, and its likely your damaged drive wont boot anyway, so the idea is to just give yourself time to copy files you don't have backed up. You want a working drive in the system. Drives are cheap - 160 gig drive at my local store is $29.
After your system is working again, place the damaged drive in an anti-static bag and leave it in the freezer over night. As the metal freezes it contracts, which will move the head slightly. Then open the case for your computer and make sure you are ready to plug in your damaged drive as a data drive - if its an IDE drive, you want to be sure the jumpers are set properly. Finally when you are ready, take the damaged drive from the freezer and quickly install it. Turn on the PC and cross your fingers. Make sure you know exactly where your precious files are stored, because even if this trick works you will only have a few minutes before the drive heats up and fails again. Then if it works, start copying your files to the new drive.
I've tried this trick about 8 times (I do this sort of work for a living) and I have about a 50% success rate of getting SOMETHING off the drive. Usually you can only count on about 5-10 minutes of functionality. My best case brought the drive back for about an hour. I've never heard of this trick working more than once, so be advised.
Of course the best remedy is to always have three drives in your system - one internal system drive for booting the OS and holding your programs; one internal data drive for your files, pus a backup of your system drive (I use Ghost); and then finally an external USB / firewire / esata drive for data backup. You should do an incremental backup at least once a week, or after every major session. Do this and you wont need to be pulling hard drives out of your freezer....
Don't do it and:
