cold storage saves data on failing external

Maybe these two things are already known by many of you, but they were
a revelation to me, so I thought I'd share them:

(1) The refrigerator can help you rescue data from a failing external
drive.
(2) Sometimes the failure is the enclosure instead of the drive itself.

Some details follow. I began to see some problems with one of the two
FW external drives I use for backups and maintenance. It sometimes took
two or three power-on/power-off cycles to get it to mount. I foolishly
ignored these signs. Then, when at my Dad's, helping him with some
maintenance, the drive apparently went totally bad - I was unable to
mount its volumes at all.

Sure enough, back home, I was able to mount once and get a screen shot
of contents, but then unable to get any more mounts. A friend from work
said he'd sometimes had luck rescuing some data by putting the external
in the freezer. I tried this and it gave me enough time to copy a few
data sets. I was concerned about all the condensation from the freezer,
so next time I just put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Using this
method several times, I eventually copied all my data. I would
eventually start getting errors and Finder would freeze. But I'd get
enough time, each iteration, to copy some big data sets, the largest
being 60 Gig.

That enclosures could go bad was not really a new revelation to me, but
I *assumed* in this case that my hard drive was going bad. I ordered a
new 500 Gig Seagate from Newegg. I've had great luck over the years
with both Seagate and Newegg, so was horrified when the new drive would
not mount. It then occurred to me that I ought to at least investigate
the possibility that the enclosure was bad. I took the drive to work
and tried it in an enclosure there. It came right up. Back home, I
tried my "bad" drive in the enclosure borrowed from work and -
surprise! - no problems mounting and using the volumes.

I learned a *new* lesson: the fridge can save your data; and
re-learned an *old* lesson: never assume.

I've ordered a new enclosure. I don't feel too bad about the unneeded
hard drive purchase, since it was about time to move up in capacity. I
hope the lessons I learned will be of value to some of you folks.

- Gary G