Help, fire clean up suggestions.

[Hebbes]

My house burnt down on September 11th. I was allowed back in yesterday to see what I could salvage. I was able to get all my computers out but everything is wet and full of soot. Any tips or tricks for getting my machines back up and running?

[Skipple]

Regardless of what you try and do to get the computer back up and running:

 

If there are any files that exist on the drives that are of any importance to you, before you do anything, removed those drives and take them to a data recovery company near you, explain the situation and that you would like the data on the drives backed up. 

 

From there, you can go about trying to salvage the computers. 

[YoungBlade]

I'm really sorry to hear that happened to you. I hope everyone in your household is okay.

 

Gamers Nexus actually did a video about trying to fix a PC that was in a house fire a couple of years ago. You could look to that as a sort of guide on how the process could work.

 

[whispous]

That sucks. There will be a time in the not too distant future where you'll be back on your feet with all the gear you need, keep a hold of that knowledge.

 

 

In the strong hope that you had insurance for contents, I would strongly recommend taking well-lit, comprehensive photographs of your machines, and try to find any proofs of purchases for the machine/parts.

[Kilrah]

Take the storage out so that can hopefully be cleaned up and recovered to new storage, then everything in the trash and replaced through insurance.

[Hebbes]

55 minutes ago, whispous said:

That sucks. There will be a time in the not too distant future where you'll be back on your feet with all the gear you need, keep a hold of that knowledge.

 

 

In the strong hope that you had insurance for contents, I would strongly recommend taking well-lit, comprehensive photographs of your machines, and try to find any proofs of purchases for the machine/parts.

Yeah insurance called the whole building a loss and just paid us the max we had on our personal property coverage. Just hoping I can save the boards. I assume it's going to be a lot of time with a brush and denatured alcohol. 

[Hebbes]

1 hour ago, YoungBlade said:

I'm really sorry to hear that happened to you. I hope everyone in your household is okay.

 

Gamers Nexus actually did a video about trying to fix a PC that was in a house fire a couple of years ago. You could look to that as a sort of guide on how the process could work.

 

Thank you. This should help. I had a lot of 90's and early 2000's machines I'm hoping I can get working again. Thankfully nothing go damaged by the fire itself. Just the water and what was in the water. 

[Hebbes]

8 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Take the storage out so that can hopefully be cleaned up and recovered to new storage, then everything in the trash and replaced through insurance.

I wish I could just do that. I have a lot of mid to late 90's and early 2000's machines I'm hoping I can revive, not to mention my CRTs. 

[Kilrah]

3 minutes ago, Hebbes said:

I wish I could just do that. I have a lot of mid to late 90's and early 2000's machines I'm hoping I can revive, not to mention my CRTs. 

That wasn't mentioned so yeah the default expectation is "it's just your few years old work/gaming PC and as a small "benefit" to the whole ordeal you get a free upgrade".

If it's stuff that's rare or you care about then it's a different story.

 

You probably had to restore those already, so it's... another, more difficult round of doing that I guess.

[Hebbes]

1 hour ago, Skipple said:

Regardless of what you try and do to get the computer back up and running:

 

If there are any files that exist on the drives that are of any importance to you, before you do anything, removed those drives and take them to a data recovery company near you, explain the situation and that you would like the data on the drives backed up. 

 

From there, you can go about trying to salvage the computers. 

Nothing really of value most of the drives. Hoping the two 5.25in SCSI drives I was trying to image from some NCR 7000CP servers are okay. They were on the floor. I will for sure be taking them to a professional to see if they can image them now. 

[Hebbes]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

That wasn't mentioned so yeah the default expectation is "it's just your few years old work/gaming PC and as a small "benefit" to the whole ordeal you get a free upgrade".

If it's stuff that's rare or you care about then it's a different story.

 

You probably had to restore those already, so it's... another, more difficult round of doing that I guess.

Honestly they were well cared for machines when I received them. Have a Compaq Deskpro 6000 with a Pentium MMX and a Matrox Millennium video card, HP Pavillion 750n with a 1.67GHz P4, HP Compaq DC7600 with a 3.2GHz P4HT, an VIA EPIA-M mini itx motherboard that I was getting ready to recase for a DOS machine that I could use on a 240p display, PowerSpecPC with a Pentium 3. Newest machine I own is a Dell XPS 8900 that I just upgraded to a GTX 1660 Ti from the GTX 745 it had. So also all my old GPUs were there, GeForce 5000 and 8000 series. GTX 580, the 745. Ugh. Being a retro PC collector is hard. Just glad I didn't have the pair of NCR 7000CP servers down there.