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Smoke damage to HDD and SSD longevity

Raiden60
By Raiden60
in Storage Devices
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So a couple of weeks ago early hours of the morning, there was a house fire that claimed all of upstairs. The fire started in my bedroom and the smoke seeped into my computer room. Since the fire brigade arrived quickly and extinguished the fire within minutes of it starting, the fire stayed in that room and the hall. The independent company doing the repairs have said that the computer is probably toast (it was on at the time of the fire too) but the HDD and SSD would probably be fine. This makes sense, as the soot on the HDD was only on the top and was minimal, and the SSD was attached to the back of the Zalman Z11 case that I had, and had almost no soot on it at all. So, my question is, what is the effect of this smoke on the longevity of these drives? Would I still be able to use them? Or do I need to get new storage devices? I'm planning a build for a new PC atm as the insurance has now verified that they will pay, so I'm just wondering what parts I need to put in. I'm also really behind on the new technologies that are in place now, so I'm really just throwing crap together seeing what works (my build was Z97 haswell), but I'm digressing now.

 

Tl;dr: Computer irreversibly damaged by smoke, HDD and SSD are said to be fine, how long will they last?

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hdd's are usually sealed,so it should be fine if the temperature was alright

i7 4790K | 4.5ghz @1.19v / 1080 ti strix oc  / Asus Z97 Pro Gamer  / 970 Evo 500GB | 850 Evo 500GB / Corsair 780t white|window  

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3 minutes ago, McHox said:

hdd's are usually sealed,so it should be fine if the temperature was alright

Well, I guess that makes sense actually, thanks

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18 minutes ago, McHox said:

hdd's are usually sealed,so it should be fine if the temperature was alright

All HDD but the new helium ones got "Breather holes" some have them on the top, others behind the PCB. For those on the top, there is an extra warning "do not cover!"

Main System:

Anghammarad : Asrock Taichi x570, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X @4900 MHz. 32 GB DDR4 3600, some NVME SSDs, Gainward Phoenix RTX 3070TI

 

System 2 "Igluna" AsRock Fatal1ty Z77 Pro, Core I5 3570k @4300, 16 GB Ram DDR3 2133, some SSD, and a 2 TB HDD each, Gainward Phantom 760GTX.

System 3 "Inskah" AsRock Fatal1ty Z77 Pro, Core I5 3570k @4300, 16 GB Ram DDR3 2133, some SSD, and a 2 TB HDD each, Gainward Phantom 760GTX.

 

On the Road: Acer Aspire 5 Model A515-51G-54FD, Intel Core i5 7200U, 8 GB DDR4 Ram, 120 GB SSD, 1 TB SSD, Intel CPU GFX and Nvidia MX 150, Full HD IPS display

 

Media System "Vio": Aorus Elite AX V2, Ryzen 7 5700X, 64 GB Ram DDR4 3200 Mushkin, 1 275 GB Crucial MX SSD, 1 tb Crucial MX500 SSD. IBM 5015 Megaraid, 4 Seagate Ironwolf 4TB HDD in raid 5, 4 WD RED 4 tb in another Raid 5, Gainward Phoenix GTX 1060

 

(Abit Fatal1ty FP9 IN SLI, C2Duo E8400, 6 GB Ram DDR2 800, far too less diskspace, Gainward Phantom 560 GTX broken need fixing)

 

Nostalgia: Amiga 1200, Tower Build, CPU/FPU/MMU 68EC020, 68030, 68882 @50 Mhz, 10 MByte ram (2 MB Chip, 8 MB Fast), Fast SCSI II, 2 CDRoms, 2 1 GB SCSI II IBM Harddrives, 512 MB Quantum Lightning HDD, self soldered Sync changer to attach VGA displays, WLAN

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Just now, Anghammarad said:

All HDD but the new helium ones got "Breather holes" some have them on the top, others behind the PCB. For those on the top, there is an extra warning "do not cover!"

Yeah, I thought there might be something like that. Isn't it usually filtered though?

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Just now, Raiden60 said:

Yeah, I thought there might be something like that. Isn't it usually filtered though?

Yes, and usually nothing seeps in, it is there for the spin up and spin down times, as well as for temperature changes so that the pressure inside the HDD is always the same.

 

So it would only suck in air when cooling.

Main System:

Anghammarad : Asrock Taichi x570, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X @4900 MHz. 32 GB DDR4 3600, some NVME SSDs, Gainward Phoenix RTX 3070TI

 

System 2 "Igluna" AsRock Fatal1ty Z77 Pro, Core I5 3570k @4300, 16 GB Ram DDR3 2133, some SSD, and a 2 TB HDD each, Gainward Phantom 760GTX.

System 3 "Inskah" AsRock Fatal1ty Z77 Pro, Core I5 3570k @4300, 16 GB Ram DDR3 2133, some SSD, and a 2 TB HDD each, Gainward Phantom 760GTX.

 

On the Road: Acer Aspire 5 Model A515-51G-54FD, Intel Core i5 7200U, 8 GB DDR4 Ram, 120 GB SSD, 1 TB SSD, Intel CPU GFX and Nvidia MX 150, Full HD IPS display

 

Media System "Vio": Aorus Elite AX V2, Ryzen 7 5700X, 64 GB Ram DDR4 3200 Mushkin, 1 275 GB Crucial MX SSD, 1 tb Crucial MX500 SSD. IBM 5015 Megaraid, 4 Seagate Ironwolf 4TB HDD in raid 5, 4 WD RED 4 tb in another Raid 5, Gainward Phoenix GTX 1060

 

(Abit Fatal1ty FP9 IN SLI, C2Duo E8400, 6 GB Ram DDR2 800, far too less diskspace, Gainward Phantom 560 GTX broken need fixing)

 

Nostalgia: Amiga 1200, Tower Build, CPU/FPU/MMU 68EC020, 68030, 68882 @50 Mhz, 10 MByte ram (2 MB Chip, 8 MB Fast), Fast SCSI II, 2 CDRoms, 2 1 GB SCSI II IBM Harddrives, 512 MB Quantum Lightning HDD, self soldered Sync changer to attach VGA displays, WLAN

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The HDD should be fine but if the SSD got hot it could be damaged.

PC Specs:

CPU: Intel i9 12900K

CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H150i Elite Capellix

Mother Board: MSI z690 carbon WiFi

RAM: TeamSport Elite DDR5 2x16 4800mhz

Storage: 2TB Samsung 970 Plus NVMe, 240 SanDisk SSD Plus, Crucial MX300 750GB SSD

GPU: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1080 

Case: Corsair Crystal 460X

PSU: Cosrair RM850X 80+ Gold

OS: Windows 11 Home

Monitor: Acer Predator XB271HU 27" 1440p @ 165hz

Keyboard: Razer Black Widow Chroma

Mouse: Logitech G502

Sound: Sony MDR 1000x Headphones, Blue Snowball Microphone

 

Laptop Specs:

Gigabyte Aorus 15G

CPU: Intel i7 10875H

RAM: 16gb DDR4

Storage: 512gb NVMe, 1TB Crucial MX300 SATA SSD

GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q

 

 

 

 

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