Damp hard drive and SSD

[Raiden60]

Ok, so a while ago I had a house fire which damaged my computer due to soot. I removed the hard drive and SSD and put them in a box, and left that box in the house. The house had no heating and in the middle of winter the air was very cold and moist. So when I got the drives today and found they were damp (Probably have been since November) I’m wondering if the data is damaged. I really don’t want the data to be irretrievable, can someone help me out? The drives are a WD 1tb Blue and a sandisk x110, and both were full to capacity.

[Jaxzzzzz]

do not plug them in or apply voltage to them, let them dry as well as you can and hope for the best. 

[Levent]

if moisture is involved I say those need to go in bag full or rice (for atleast 2 weeks imo) before even attempting to connect it to power.

[Raiden60]

Just now, Jaxzzzzz said:

do not plug them in or apply voltage to them, let them dry as well as you can and hope for the best. 

If there’s damage to the PCB of the hdd will the data still be retrievable?

[ProjectBox153]

Put them in a completely dry place with air blowing on them for a long time. Don’t power them up!

[Jaxzzzzz]

if you let all the water evaporate then theoretically your pcb should be fine, not sure about residue on the platters on the hdd but it is also prolly ok

[Raiden60]

1 minute ago, Jaxzzzzz said:

if you let all the water evaporate then theoretically your pcb should be fine, not sure about residue on the platters on the hdd but it is also prolly ok

Well I’m thinking that since it is condensed water it’s should be relatively clean.

[Jaxzzzzz]

yes so let them be in a warm dry area with airflow for a few weeks 

[Gordon Bennett]

Leave them alone... at least for a few days, a week or more would be better!

 

Do not put them in direct heat either. Put them in a living room/bedroom where the temperature is more of a constant (not in the bathroom even though the temperature is usually more or less static, the humidity rises/falls too quickly).

 

I you have some packets of silica gell, put them on-top/around the drives.

 

When dried out, connect only power (no sata) to see if they spin up. If power up, then power down and connect SATA and see what happens.

 

If they don't spin up however, all is not lost, they can still be repaired by replacing the PCB or swapping out the BIOS on the PCB (that's really complicated though. My soldering skills aren't up to that task, and I can't find anyone I need to do the repair for me, and I live in Central London, have found a company in Canada, but its quite expensive)...

[Jaxzzzzz]

there are also data recovery services that deal with this sort of thing 

[AshleyAshes]

Fun fact: I once pulled a Dell P1110 CRT monitor indoors form the curb, after 4 days straight of rain, all I did was let it dry for three days straight and it turned on no problem.  I of course did NOT even plug it in when it was wet.

 

Water, at least clean water, so not so much like FLOOD water, doesn't harm most electronics so long as there's no power going through them.  Let them dry out and it's almost certain that it's fine.

[Raiden60]

Alright, ive put them in an airing cupboard and will leave them there for a week. I’m expecting to have a new computer soon but I will wait until it is completely dry before attaching it to my computer and powering it on