[Coco] Drive freezing / data reovery (WAS: Re: Need to, know if I'm in safe waters here)

[Frank Swygert]

Think about this a minute. The only way I can see that freezing the 
drive helps at all is if the bearings in the motor or drive spindles 
(usually direct drive, so spindle and motor bearings are the same on one 
end) are starting to seize. The steel shaft likely shrinks a bit more 
than the bronze bearing material. So when the thing is frozen it will 
spin until it heats up again, which might not be long depending on how 
bad the bearings are. Freezing might help if the coils are going for 
similar reasons. I don't see how freezing could help bad heads or 
platters, and shouldn't do anything for the electronics.

Well, I take that last one back! I have seen cracks in automotive 
computer circuit boards open up just enough to break contact or cause 
intermittent contact when the vehicle was good warm (or a real hot day), 
but work fine once cooled down.

In any case, it would be rather rare that freezing would help.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
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