Ổ cứng gắn ngoài USB có nguy cơ bị ngưng tụ bên trong không?

Apparently, you can kill a USB hard-drive by moving it from a cold temperature environment to a warm one and powering it up (the killer being internal condensation).

How real is the risk? What kind of temperatures are we talking about? I do not want to waste time acclimatizing my hard-drive every day if it is not necessary. Are there technologies or solutions available to mitigate the risk?

Surprisingly, I have found nothing useful on the Internet that provides satisfactory answers to my questions.

Condensation is a real danger for hard-drives. You can see in a real-life YouTube demonstration by a data-recovery specialist what a hard-drive looks like when taken out of a freezer and briefly turned on (it is full of scratches):

If you have just received or removed this unit from a climate with temperatures at or below 50°F (10°C), do not open this container until the following conditions are met, otherwise condensation could occur and damage to the device and/or media may result. Place this package in the operating environment for the time duration according to the following temperature chart.

You could possibly minimize the acclimatization time by wrapping the disk in watertight plastic while it is acclimatizing in order to reduce the humidity that would enter via the air-intakes. You should allow for some drying-off time after unwrapping the disk (for the humidity in the air already contained inside the disk).

This is not the only danger, as explained by data-recovery specialist ReWave Recovery:

• A hard-drive is at risk for sudden temperature changes including overheating and condensation.
• A sudden change in temperature that causes condensation inside the hard-drive can cause the material on the platter to evaporate which causes the read/write heads to stick to the platter and stop it from rotating.
• Overheating can also be an issue. Overheating can cause the platters to expand which makes the read/write heads travel farther to read the data. The expansion of platters can cause friction which can lead to a head crash.