Soaked, smoke-damaged, or both
Bag it wet, leave the power alone, and get it into the post to Reading today. The board, the connector, the contact strip — anything the water or the smoke actually reached is a part that can be bought, cleaned or exchanged. Behind those parts sits a sealed chamber holding the platters, which liquid does not cross and which the heat of a house fire seldom troubles. The two things nobody can undo later are a hopeful press of the power button on a damp drive, and a fortnight in a drawer while salts dry hard onto the pins. Assessment is free, one drive is £300 + VAT, and the figure arrives in writing before anything chargeable starts.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
| What you notice | What is likely wrong | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| No response since it got wet | The board has gone. The platters, sealed away from it, normally read as they always did | Seal it in a bag while still wet |
| It trips the socket, or takes the power supply with it | The board has shorted, and every retry sends another spike through to the head preamp | Stop there and leave it alone |
| White or green crust forming on the contacts | Corrosion has started, and it will not stop by itself | Don't leave it lying around |
| Fire damage, with the casing intact | The alloy body did its job. A failed board is a part we can buy | Leave it shut, move it flat |
| Soot forced into the pins and the breather filter | Acidic, and abrasive with it. One spin and the drive grinds its own surfaces | Don't disturb the soot at all |
| Salt water reached it | Chloride does not stop at the board; it reaches the coating itself. Nothing wet is worse | Bag it damp, seal it, post it |
A case number goes on your device the day it reaches us, and an engineer then finds the real fault — free, and before anything else happens. You are told plainly what will come back and what will not, with one fixed figure in writing beside it. Nothing chargeable starts until you have read that and said yes.
Damp is how we want it to arrive — the bag opened on the bench should still be wet inside. Dry it on the way and whatever the water was carrying crystallises hard onto the contacts. Heat and smoke jobs travel differently: untouched, soot and all.
Deposits come off and the contact strip is brought back to bare metal. Then a donor board of the right model goes on, with the ROM chip taken from your own board fitted to it.
Cleaning buys time and no more, because corrosion resumes. So the image is taken the same day, and once that full sector-by-sector copy exists your drive goes onto a shelf while the rest of the work runs on the copy.
You see the file list first, then decide. Nothing is invoiced until you have said yes, and on most jobs there is no fee at all if the data does not come back. What we pull off goes onto media bought in for your job, and the postage home is ours. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.
Very little of this work is dramatic. A pipe split behind kitchen units, a washing machine that emptied itself overnight, a radiator letting go in a storeroom over a closed weekend, a drive carried out of a house fire and posted the same afternoon. Ordinary jobs, and most of them go home as ordinary jobs. What separates those that do from those that do not is settled before the parcel lands: whether somebody reached for the power, and how many days passed between the damage and the postbox. Neither is fixable on the bench.
Twenty years of family photographs came home because of two things nobody did: nobody switched it on to check, and nobody tried to dry it out. Sealed in a bag and still wet, it was posted that afternoon. On the bench the pads were cleaned and the ROM was read across to a donor board, and the full image came off on day four.
Most of the time, yes. Water kills the circuit board, and a board is a stock part. What it never reaches is the sealed chamber where the platters turn. Two conditions decide the job: that nobody pressed the power button while the thing was still damp, and that it got here fast.
It does not, and it adds two problems of its own. Rice sheds starch dust and fine grit, and both find their way into the contacts. Meanwhile the days a drive spends sitting in a bowl are days corrosion runs on — while the moisture doing the harm sits behind a seal no grain can get past.
Often, yes. An alloy body holds the platters, and cooked electronics are simply parts to swap. What makes a job hard is a casing pulled out of shape, or soot that has worked past the breather filter. Post it in the state you found it: sealed, uncleaned, and with no attempt at power.
No, and we are aware that runs against instinct. As the water evaporates it leaves behind everything it was carrying, baked onto the contacts and down into the seams of the casing. So bag it wet, and it should still be wet when an engineer opens that bag here.
You pay nothing for the look. What comes back is a list — the files that opened, the ones that did not, and one fixed figure to finish the job. Leave it switched off until you have that in writing.