Recovering data from a wet drive

If you have the laptop

Remove the battery and the BIOS battery and it might be ok.


I managed to fully submerge a motherboard, cpu & ram in water for about 30 seconds (with the BIOS battery in). That was about 7-8 years ago, all the kits still works :D


Was leak testing my WC gear, and my dog managed to jump up and push it all into the sink when I was in the other room on the phone :D
 
delta0 said:
Most hard drives have a breather hole.
Click to expand...

Thought they had done away with breather holes in the past few years or so .... guess I am wrong :(

Even with a breather hole, they're designed to keep moisture, dust out like a diaphragm of some kind?
 
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Weazle said:
Thought they had done away with breather holes in the past few years or so .... guess I am wrong :(

Even with a breather hole, they're designed to keep moisture, dust out like a diaphragm of some kind?
Click to expand...

Only the helium filled drives like the WD black don't have them. Otherwise all drives have them. They let air in and out when the drive is in operation. They will let water in.
 
I imagine it will work fine, recently had a drive in at work out of a CCTV system that had been thrown down a well and found about 3 weeks later. Looked absolutely wrecked left it for about a week, and surprisingly all the data was perfectly intact.
 
Just thought I would post back the results.

Pulled the data from the drive no problem.

Not sure how wet the laptop got, it was in a laptop bag in a few inches of water. It was standing on end so I think the majority of the components were probably kept dry.

Didn't try booting the laptop up. Its gone with all the other electrical stuff to be PAT tested and then either returned if okay or disposed of.

I have now been asked to purchase him an external drive for backups. It always takes a close call before people backup their data.
 
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