Portable hard drive died on me in a coffee shop in Chiang Mai last Tuesday

I was sitting at my usual spot in Chiang Mai last Tuesday when my external hard drive just stopped spinning. I had about 2 years of client files, tax records, and travel photos on that thing with no recent backup. I spent the rest of the afternoon panicking and calling local repair shops. One guy said it could cost $300 just to look at it. I ended up trying a DIY freezer trick out of desperation and it actually worked for about 20 minutes to copy the files over. Has anyone else lost important data on the road and found a cheap way to recover it?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_jenkins1d ago

That freezer trick is wild, I can't believe it actually worked for you, even if it was just temporary. I had a similar scare in Vietnam last year and found a guy who used a SATA to USB adapter to read the drive directly instead of messing with the enclosure. Cost me like 15 bucks and saved everything. Next time I'd just grab one of those adapters as a backup tool before leaving home.

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charles6781d ago

Yeah man, totally! I had almost the same thing happen with an old laptop drive a couple years back. The USB controller on the enclosure just died out of nowhere, but the drive itself was fine. Bought one of those SATA adapters off Amazon for like 12 bucks, plugged it straight into the drive, and it booted up no problem. Now I keep that little adapter in my go bag when I travel. Saved my ass more than once with friends who think their hard drive is toast when it's really just the crappy enclosure.