Damage from ice and toxicity of ice-inhibiting cryoprotective agents (CPAs) are key issues in assisted reproduction of humans, domestic animals, and endangered species using cryopreserved oocytes and embryos. Ice formed in bovine oocytes (similar in size to oocytes of humans and most other mammals) after rapid cooling and during rapid warming were examined using synchrotron-based time-resolved x-ray diffraction. Using cooling rates, warming rates and CPA concentrations of current practice, oocytes show no ice after cooling but always develop large ice fractions — consistent with crystallization of most free water — during warming, so most ice-related damage must occur during warming. Increasing cooling rates allows oocytes soaked as in current practice to remain essentially ice free during both cooling and warming. Much larger convective warming rates are demonstrated and will allow routine ice-free cryopreservation with smaller CPA concentrations. These results clarify the roles of cooling, warming, and CPA concentration in generating ice in oocytes and establish the structure and grain size of ice formed. Ice formation can be eliminated as a factor affecting post-thaw oocyte viability and development in many species, improving outcomes and allowing other deleterious effects of the cryopreservation cycle to be independently studied.