Cause of loss · flood or fire
Platters usually shrug off a flood, and files come back out of fires that reduce the rest of the computer to scrap. Drives are killed by what people do afterwards: the optimistic power-on, the airing cupboard, the rice. And by delay, since corrosion is under way inside a few hours. Bag it, seal it, post it today.
Run the problem past an engineer
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| On screen | What's behind it | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing at all since it got wet | The board has gone; inside the sealed chamber the platters will almost certainly be fine | Bag it damp and send it in |
| Knocks out the PSU or the socket on plug-in | A shorted board; each further attempt drives current into the head preamp | Stop trying now |
| Green or white fuzz across the pins | Live corrosion, still eating as you read | The clock is running |
| Recovered from a fire, case unopened | Platters sit in a sealed housing, and a burnt PCB can simply be swapped | Carry it carefully; keep it shut |
| Soot on the pins or over the breather hole | Gritty, acidic residue that kills a drive the instant it spins | Leave the soot. No power |
| Dropped in salt water | Chloride goes after the recording layer; no water does worse | Seal it, still wet |
Every item gets its own case number on the day it lands here. An engineer traces the fault, gives you a plain assessment of what is realistically recoverable, and puts one fixed price in writing. The diagnosis is free, you are under no obligation, and chargeable work starts only when you say go.
A wet drive should reach us wet, sealed in a bag; let it dry and the minerals in solution crystallise over every surface. Fire jobs come in as they are, unopened, with the soot left where it fell.
The corrosion is removed, the contacts brought back to life, and a donor board fitted carrying the ROM chip out of your own drive: new electronics, original platters.
Chemistry picks up again the moment cleaning ends, so imaging follows immediately. With a copy in hand, the original is never spun up again.
You get the full list of recovered files first, and nothing is charged until you approve it. Data goes back on fresh media, return postage paid, and the job stays open on our side until you confirm every file opens at your end.
Every flood and fire job follows the same shape: most of the result is settled before we ever open the parcel, by two things — whether the power button got pressed, and how quickly it travelled. Drives kept switched off and posted the same day come back as routine work. 'I only gave it a quick go' is the sentence engineers hate: on a damp PCB, that single go is what turns a board repair into a heads repair too.
The owner got it right: nothing was powered up, the damp drive went into a sealed bag and straight into the post. At the bench we cleaned the contacts, fitted a donor board that carried the original ROM, and imaged the whole disk within the week — twenty years of family photos back, no worse for it.
Usually, on two conditions: nobody powered it up damp, and it reaches a bench soon. Water normally kills the board and leaves the platters alone, and a board can be replaced.
No. Sealed electronics get nothing from rice — it never reaches the inside, it leaves starch and dust behind, and corrosion keeps working away at the device the whole time.
Often, yes. The platters live inside a sealed metal body, and a burnt circuit board is a straightforward swap. What actually ruins a job is warping, or soot that has worked past the seal — so keep the drive closed, do not rinse it, do not power it.
Counter-intuitive, but no. As it dries, dissolved salts and minerals crystallise over the surfaces. Seal a wet drive in a bag; if salt water got to it, keep it wet right up to the bench.
Switch a failing device on again and you lose a little more. Open a case before you do — the diagnosis is free, whatever it finds.