Water Damaged Hard Drives

Although most hard drive issues we deal with are either mechanical or electronic, we also get devices that have suffered from liquid damage.

We have seen most scenarios of water damage for example:

• Flood damaged due to water leaks in buildings
• Accidently spilt tea on a laptop (also works with wine, coffee, smoothies etc)
• Forgot to take portable hard drive out of jacket before it gets washed
• Caught in the rain and no substantial cover for the hard drive

Time is of the essence when water damaged hard drives are concerned. If we get the hard drive in a reasonable time, data recovery is possible.

Here are some tips to follow if you have a liquid damaged device:

• Do not power up the device, it can cause further issues
• Do not open the hard drive yourself, as tempting as it may be this will almost certainly result in data loss
• Do not attempt to swap parts yourself, sometimes this can do more harm than good
• Drying out the device is not always the best option: sealing it up in a water tight container and sending it to us as soon as possible will increase the chances of a successful recovery