Every year I have a problem trying to figure out where to hide Christmas presents and this year I’ve finally decided to just leave them in a box in the trunk of my card. My only concern is the cold weather. Can cold mess up digital cameras, iPods, etc?
Oh yeah, that’s a serious problem, one that I have been thinking about myself since I realized that I couldn’t leave my own iPod in my car on nights when it gets below 32F, which we’ve definitely been experiencing in the last week or so here in Colorado.
I asked the folks at DriveSavers for their input on this issue, since they make their money recovering data from damaged drives and gadgets, and here’s what they reported back to me:
“Winter’s cold temperatures can certainly damage hard drives and electronic gadgets. This holiday season, expensive presents with built-in hard drives like new game systems, personal computers and MP3 music players require extra protection from the cold. DriveSavers, experts at data recovery, warns that hard drives can be damaged when the temperature drops below freezing.”
Their advice to you is:
- Don’t keep gifts of electronic devices hidden in car trunks, especially: laptops or desktop computers, digital cameras, MP3 music players, game systems or hard drive-based video recorders.
- If your hard drive-based gifts experience extreme temperatures (below 30 degrees), allow them time to warm to room temperature before operating them.
- If you receive a new personal computer, be sure to backup all the files on your old computer before starting to transfer them to the new one.
- As an added precaution, always use surge protectors or battery backup systems to protect your new electronic devices. This will prevent damage from power spikes or surges, common during the winter.
It definitely sounds like your storage tactic isn’t going to work this winter, so I would encourage you to find a different solution. Perhaps you have a friend whose kids aren’t so inquisitive? Or a neighbor? 🙂
I live in an apartment where the heat is included but controlled by The Landlord. They turn the heat down below 70 degrees to save money. When it’s below 30 degrees outside it’s almost as cold on the inside of my apartment as it is on the outside.
We recently went through a two week cold snap with below zero temps on various days. I noticed my DVD completely stopped working. I could get it to play on occasion and it would play an entire. Then it would stop working the next day and nothing I did could get it working again.
My Heavenly Father finally got me to realize that it was because of the cold weather. Once the temps returned to 30 degrees and above, I began playing DVD’s again and now the machine is working normally the way it was back in the fall. Interesting!
The catch was that the explanation wasn’t terribly thorough. The cause behind the damage isn’t due to the temperature itself, but often times the cold to hot transition. Of course I’m sure I’m missing some things, and it depends a lot on the device, but condensation is a potential problem.
For example, when they overclock computers, which makes them run extremely hot, the extreme guys will actually put the computer, or parts of it, in liquid nitrogen – think -196 °C. I don’t know enough to know which components can or can’t take that, but that’s a bit colder than a car in winter. But the component isn’t take out while on, warmed quickly, and let condensation short circuit it.
Anyway, a better explanation might have cleared things up.
i got my iphone laptop and ipod tooken away and my parents put it in the garagei live near edmonton canada(very cold climate) where we have -40to-50 temperature in winter and my iphones all messed up
Matthew, did you let it come up to temperature from freezing slowly, or bring it directly into a hot room? If the latter, I wonder if condensation inside the device is the culprit?
I’ve had my Ipod for 4 months and left it in my car overnight (below freezing in MA). It won’t turn on and appears to be corrupted.
I have left my iPod in the car 5 days a week 10 hours a day while at work—all year long. I live in Minneapolis. Temps below 32 degrees for 5 months a year. Frequent temps below zero degrees. Many times 20 below zero. I have NEVER had a problem with the unit and it is now about 8 years old. I get to the gym, strap it on my arm and it works.
I was unaware of any danger and left a hard drive I have connected to a TV monitor in the car for my kid to watch networked movies for over two years now. It has run perfectly fine with zero issues. Temps go to about zero in the winter and about 100F in the summer. This hard drive system is a western digital media player. I’m surprised at the stories of iphones breaking etc. I mean this hard drive isn’t that fancy. I guess life variables will different but I’ve had no issues in a time proven test using the system almost daily while my kid watched movies.
Thanks for the info. I noticed that you focused alot on temperature’s effect on hard drives (i.e. ferromagnetic HDD’s), which is due to temperature’s effect upon magnetism.
I want to add that LCD screens are also affected, albeit temporarily in most cases. Cold tempatures cause LCD screens (like the one in my PSP) to ghost, create shadows and darken the screen more than usual until warmed up. This is also due to the nature of physics. Cold temperatures cause liquids (like the liquid crystal in LCD, duh!) to travel at lower speeds. The freezing point for liquid crystal is much lower than water, but I couldn’t find any hard numbers.
Another thing to consider is condensation. Bringing anything from colder weather to warmer weather will cause anything not airtight to cause condensation at levels based upon the temperature differences. This will range from an annoyance (think of condensation between an lcd screen and its protective cover – condensation on UMD/DVD/CD laser lenses cause them to read/write incorrectly) to catastrophic (water in any piece of electronics is never good news).