"On the fritz" equals broken or not working. American apparently although I'm Australian. I should have said "buggered" or "stuffed" although I know that "buggered" has different less friendly meanings elsewhere

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ont4.htm

In my case the drive was preventing the Windows machine from booting and a Knoppix disk had issues booting also. I expect the freezer trick helps with specific problems although I'm not sure what exactly and I don't know what is wrong with my drive.