Flooded, damp or fire-damaged
Very few drives are finished by the water or the heat itself. They are finished in the hours afterwards, when somebody stands one on a radiator or plugs it in to see whether it still works. Whether the water came off a river, out of a burst pipe or through a ceiling, the drives that recover are the ones nobody touched. Seal it wet and post it to us from Maidenhead today.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The signs | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| No sign of life after a soaking | Water has taken the electronics; behind the seal, the recording surfaces are very likely intact | Into a bag damp, then post |
| Connecting it takes out the socket or the PSU | A short circuit across the PCB; the preamplifier takes the surge each time | Leave it alone |
| A powdery bloom on the contacts | Corrosion that is still advancing today | Do not let it sit |
| Retrieved after a fire, casing sealed | The recording surfaces are enclosed; a burnt board is a replaceable part | Move it gently and leave it sealed |
| Black residue over the connector and vent | Abrasive acid deposits; one spin-up and the surfaces are scored | Do not wipe it or test it |
| Salt water got to it | Chloride goes straight at the magnetic film; nothing does more harm | Bag it wet, at once |
Nothing becomes chargeable until you have said yes to it. Each item takes a case number of its own the moment it arrives, an engineer establishes what has actually failed, and you are given a candid view of which files stand a realistic chance of returning. The single quote that follows is fixed, written down, and costs nothing.
Anything wet travels wet, inside a sealed bag, because a drive that dries out on the way deposits everything the water was carrying across its own surfaces. Fire work arrives untouched, soot and all.
Deposits are lifted off, the contact strip is brought back to a clean surface, and a matched donor board goes on with your own drive's ROM chip transferred across.
Corrosion restarts as soon as the treatment stops, so the imaging run begins straight away; once a full copy exists, the original is retired.
Nothing is billed until you have seen the recovered file list in full and told us to go ahead. What comes back arrives on new media, with the return journey at our cost, and the case stays open at this end until you have opened every file yourself.
Two decisions settle most of these cases: whether the power button was touched at all, and how long the drive sat before it travelled. Both are made well before the parcel is opened at the bench. Much of this work is domestic rather than dramatic — a burst pipe, a failed appliance, a ceiling down after a leak — and those drives come back as routine when they arrive sealed and untested. On a wet board, one second of power adds a head replacement to a board repair.
Nothing was switched on, which is what saved it: the drive was sealed into a bag while still damp and posted the same day. At the bench the contacts were cleaned, a donor board was fitted carrying the ROM off the original, and the disk was imaged in full inside the week. Twenty years of family photographs came home.
In most cases yes, provided it was not switched on while damp and it reaches the lab quickly. Immersion generally destroys the circuit board rather than the platters, and boards can be substituted.
No. A hard drive is sealed, so rice cannot reach the moisture that matters; what it does leave behind is starch and grit, and the corrosion carries on unchecked for every day it sits there.
Frequently they are. The recording surfaces sit inside a sealed alloy casing, and scorched electronics can be rebuilt. What actually ends a case is heat distortion, or soot that has worked through the breather filter, so send it as it came out: closed, unwashed and unpowered.
No, though it feels wrong. Drying leaves whatever was dissolved in the water behind as crystals across the contacts and the platters, so bag it while it is still wet and keep it that way in transit.
Each further power-up asks more of a drive that has already begun to fail. Open the case first and let the free diagnosis tell you what is left.