Water damage and heat damage
Send it sealed, send it today, and whatever else happens do not dry it. Everything the water or the soot actually reached — the connector, the contact pads, the board itself — is a component that can be cleaned, bought or exchanged. The chamber where the platters turn is sealed against exactly this, and the temperatures an ordinary house fire reaches seldom trouble what sits behind that seal. Two things no bench can undo afterwards: a hopeful press of the power button while the drive was still wet, and fourteen days in a drawer while salts set hard on the pins. There is no charge for the assessment, a single drive is priced at £300 + VAT, that figure is put in writing before anything chargeable begins, and on most jobs an invoice only ever follows recovered files.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633
| How it shows itself | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing at all since the water got to it | The board is finished. Shut away from all of it, the platters generally read as before | Bag it while it is still wet |
| It trips the socket, or stops the power supply too | A shorted board, and each retry sends another spike towards the head preamplifier | Go no further with it |
| White or green crust building across the contacts | Corrosion is running, and nothing halts it on its own | Into the post today, not next week |
| Heat damage, but the casing is intact | The alloy shell did its work; a finished board is a part we buy | Keep it shut and keep it level |
| Soot worked into the pins and the breather filter | Abrasive as well as acidic — one rotation and it grinds its own surfaces | Do not touch the soot |
| Salt water has been through it | Chloride passes the board and enters the recording layer; nothing wet does more harm | Damp, bagged, sealed, posted |
A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
Damp is how we want one to turn up, and the bag opened at this end ought still to be wet when it is. Allow a drive to dry in transit and every dissolved thing in the water crystallises onto the pads instead. Heat and soot travel the other way about: untouched, soot and all.
Deposits come away until the contact pads are bare metal again. A donor board of the right model then goes on, carrying the ROM chip lifted across from your own.
Cleaning a board only buys time, since corrosion picks up again behind it. The image is therefore made straight away, and with a full sector-by-sector copy in hand your drive is shelved while everything afterwards runs against that copy.
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.
Hardly any of it is dramatic. A split pipe behind the kitchen units. A sprinkler head letting go above a comms cupboard on a Friday night. A washing machine emptying itself across a floor at three in the morning. A fire-damaged office, and a drive bagged out of it that same afternoon. Everyday jobs, and most end up as everyday jobs. Which way yours goes is largely settled before the parcel is sealed — by whether a power button was pressed, and by the number of days that passed before the thing was posted. Neither can be put right at this end.
Nobody powered it up to test it and nobody propped it beside a heater, and that is why two decades of family photographs are back. It went into a bag wet and caught the post the same afternoon. The pads were cleaned, the ROM moved onto a donor board, and the full image was done by day four.
Usually. It is the circuit board that water finishes off, and boards are stock parts. The one place water does not get is the sealed chamber the platters turn in. Two things settle the job: whether anybody pressed the power button while the drive was wet, and how quickly it got here.
None at all, and it brings in two problems that were not there before. Grains shed starch dust and fine grit, and both settle into the contacts. Worse, the corrosion carries on the whole time, fed by moisture shut away somewhere no grain is ever going to get near.
Frequently. An alloy shell holds the platters, and cooked electronics are only parts to swap. The awkward ones are those whose casing has warped, or where soot worked past the breather filter. Send it precisely as you found it — sealed, uncleaned, and with nobody having tried the power.
No, and yes, that is the opposite of instinct. Evaporation leaves every dissolved thing behind, set hard onto the pads and into the seams. Bag it while it is wet. It should still be wet when the bag is opened at this end.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive switched off.