I agree, but I've only been an EET for 34 years, so what do I know! Wife won't listen to me either!
EDIT OK sorry just read the freezer link. Sorry but that person has
absolutely NO idea how the read/write head works on a hard drive. I helped develop a servo-track writer system that hard drive makers use to write the servo-track head positioning info on the bottom of the bottom disk before the drive is fully assembled. I had a little open drive/motor disc development set I'd 'fly" the head on at my bench for testing purposes (with a clean air sytem/hood). The head has a little ramp/lip on the trailing edge, as the disc spins under it the air spinning with the disc surface encounters the lip/ramp and the air pressure lifts the head to "fly" above the disc.
"By freezing the hard drive, you're hopefully shrinking the platters enough that they're no longer rubbing up against the head—temporarily, at least."
Wow that is almost laughable, VERY clueless!
Wiki to the rescue!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_read-and-write_head
In a hard drive, the heads 'fly' above the disk surface with clearance of as little as 3 nanometres. The "flying height" is constantly decreasing to enable higher areal density. The flying height of the head is controlled by the design of an air-bearing etched onto the disk-facing surface of the slider. The role of the air bearing is to maintain the flying height constant as the head moves over the surface of the disk.
If the head hits the disk's surface, a catastrophic head crash can result.
OR if the tiniest piece of contaminate gets between the disc and head...