Have a Hard Drive with Water Damage? Here’s What to do

It could happen at any moment. You’re playing your favorite game, video chatting with a relative or surfing the web when you reach over for a glass of water and whiff. The water spills under your laptop or all over your PC, resulting in your hard drive having water damage. What you do from here can determine whether you keep your files on that drive.

Disconnect All Electrical Components

Your first step is to disconnect the power supply from the hard drive. Why? Because if you don’t, it could lead to an electrical short thereby making it much more difficult to recover files. If you are using an external hard drive, disconnect it from the power supply. Meanwhile, if the hard drive is internal, turn off the machine as quickly as you can as this can mitigate the risk of electrical shortage.

Refrain from Drying It

After disconnecting from the power supply, a common reaction would be to reach for a hairdryer or other device to dry the hard drive. While it seems like a logical approach, it could cause more damage to the drive. For one, the heat sources could fray or melt parts of the hard drive, leaving it in worse shape than when it was wet.

Moreover, drying the hard drive could leave it with minerals once the water evaporates. These minerals might make data recovery difficult due to the damage they inflict.

With these things in mind, it’s important to refrain from drying the damaged drive. Instead, remove it from the area where the spill or flood occurred, keeping it in a safe area until you can send it to our data recovery experts.

Don’t Open the Hard Drive

It’s also tempting to take a peek at the inside of the hard drive after damaged occurred. However, this is a big no-no because once you open the hard drive, airborne particles can taint the hard drive’s platters, leading to a difficult job for our recovery experts.

Instead, a good rule of thumb is to leave the hard drive as is. By doing so, you prevent further damage from happening due to air, water, and heat sources.

Water Damage Hard Drive Repair

Unless you’re adept at doing hard drive repairs, chances are you’ll need to find a professional to rectify the problem. Our team at SALVAGEDATA can help.

Using state-of-the-art equipment combined with our industry-leading expertise allows us to get to the heart of the issue. The result? We have successfully recovered data on wet and corrupted devices for a wide range of clients from government agencies to personal users.

You have nothing to lose by trying us out. Simply, submit the start your case form online or call us. Next, mail us your hard drive. Upon receiving it, our team will examine the drive and make recommendations based on their findings. This allows you to determine the next course of action.

When the unthinkable happens know we have your back. Contact us today to get started on recovering your files from your water damaged hard drive.