Soaked, smoke-damaged, or both
Bag the drive while it is still wet and do nothing with the power switch; get a quote first, over the phone or with the form, and send it by post to the Oxford intake lab today (or drop it off there, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed). The board, connectors, contact strips and anything else the water or smoke has touched are parts that can be bought, cleaned or replaced. Beyond those components, within a sealed housing, sit the platters. Water cannot get into this area, and in most house fires the heat will not trouble it either. The two things you can never put right later are pressing the power button once more in hope while the drive is damp, and leaving it in a drawer for a fortnight while salts dry onto the pins. Assessment is free, one drive costs £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 are sealed away from it and normally read just as they always did | Seal it in a plastic bag while there is still moisture inside |
| It trips the circuit breaker or takes the power supply with it | A short has occurred on the board, and each retry sends another electrical spike through to the head preamp | Stop there and leave it alone |
| White or green crust building on the contacts | Corrosion has started and will continue until something stops it | Don't leave it lying around |
| Fire damage, with the casing intact | The alloy body did its job. A failed board is a replaceable part | Leave it shut, move it flat |
| Soot pushed into the contacts and the breather filter | Acidic and abrasive; after one spin the drive will wear down its own surfaces | Don't disturb the soot at all |
| Salt water reached it | Chloride does not just stop at the board; it reaches the coating itself. Nothing wet is worse | Bag it damp, seal it, get a quote, post it |
A case number is assigned to your device when we receive it. An engineer then finds the real fault (free) before anything else occurs; you will be advised clearly of what will be returned and what will not, along with a single written price. Charges cannot begin until you have read this and accepted.
Damp is how we want it to arrive: when the bag is opened on the bench it should still contain moisture. Dry the drive in transit and anything dissolved in the water will crystallise hard onto the contacts. Heat and smoke jobs travel differently, untouched, soot and all.
Deposits are removed and the contact strip is brought back to bare metal. A donor board of the correct model then goes on, with the ROM chip removed from your own board fitted to it.
Cleaning buys time but does nothing to stop corrosion resuming, so the image is taken the same day. Once the complete sector-by-sector copy exists, your drive goes onto a shelf and the rest of the work runs on the copy.
You look at the file list first and make a decision about what to do. We will never invoice anything until you have said yes, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. All of the information that we recover will be put on new media purchased by us specifically for this job, and our company pays the cost of postage back to you. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.
Most of this work is mundane. A pipe splits behind kitchen units, a washing machine empties itself overnight, a radiator fails in a storeroom over a closed weekend, a drive is carried out of a house fire and posted that very afternoon. Ordinary jobs, and most of them go home as ordinary jobs. What makes each one succeed or not is settled before the parcel arrives: did someone turn it on to check it, and how long did it sit damaged before it went in the postbox? Neither can be fixed on the bench.
Twenty years of family photographs were recovered because of two things nobody did: nobody switched the drive on to check it, and nobody tried to dry it out. It was sealed in a bag while still wet and posted that afternoon. On the bench the pads were cleaned, the ROM was read across to a donor board, and the full image came off on day four.
Yes, most of the time. Water kills the circuit board, and the board is a stock part. What the water never reaches is the sealed chamber where the platters turn. There are two requirements for the job: nobody pressed the power button while the drive was still wet, and it arrived quickly.
No, and it creates two other issues. Starch powder and fine grit from the rice fall into the contacts on the drive. At the same time, every day the drive spends in a bowl is another day of corrosion, while the moisture causing the damage is on the other side of a seal that no grain of rice can get past.
Yes, often. An alloy case holds the platters, and cooked electronic components are just replacement parts. What makes a job difficult is a case pulled out of shape, or soot that has passed the breather filter. Get your quote, then post it in the state you found it: sealed, uncleaned and with no attempt at power.
No, and we know this goes against instinct. As the water evaporates, it leaves behind everything it carried, baked onto the contacts and down into the seams of the casing. So bag it wet, and when an engineer opens that bag here, it should still be wet.
There is no charge for the look. You then receive a list of the files that opened, those that did not, and a fixed amount to complete the job. Keep it switched off until you have received that in writing.