My wife recently spilled a drink on my cpu. HELP

My wife recently spilled a drink on my new cpu. It was just enough to run down the side and enter into the vent holes reaching the small mother board that is attached to my hard drive. I can see where there the liquid heated up one of the small square things and burnt two 1/32th of an inch connections. :confusedCan I replace the mother board and the hard drive still be ok,:confused or is all my pictures and programs on my cpu hopeless. Please offer any type of advice that is possible, someone mentioned buying the same exact harddrive and taking the h.d. disc out in place it in the new one.....HELP!. and Thank you

Pictures available my email is <snip>

Hp Pavillion a6314f
SeaGate Barracuda 7200.10
360 gb's

 

Sorry need a bit of clarification.

A drink got spilled and it went into your tower?

If liquid just touched the motherboard your HD should still be ok. Do you have another pc to plug your HD into?

 

Im an just learning about hardware... i know krazy amount on the software side but ... yeah .. the PCB i think is what you call it. the small (mother board like) has a burnt connection on it.

here look alike - http://www.drivestar.org/product/pcb_st/100435196.htm
if you look the photo there are three.... black square:confused larger peices. Well the bottem right square on the pcb.... has two of those tiny connections burnt up and you can see where the plastic heated up and melted a touch... :confusedwould that hurt the info on the harddrive if I replaced the pcb?:confused or could the whole thing be fried.. the cpu shut off instantly.

 

I'll let others who have more information answer but I think the thing about swapping boards on a HD involves having specific information about the exact "revision" or version of firmware on the HD. You have to purchase an exact match which can be expensive and difficult to find. Even then it may not work. You have to weigh the costs. Just the first page I found with basic information http://www.harddrive-repair.com/hard-drive-parts.html

*******
Warning: Let the whole computer dry out thoroughly before attempting to turn it back on. I saw your post regarding getting a new HD. Have you determined if the rest of the computer is still OK? Don't turn it on unless you are sure it is dry.

 

I agree with all of this. I have in the past changed the controller card on a drive. It has to be a exact swap. Seagate wouldn't sell me one, I had to buy 7 'dead' drives from a local shop until I got one that would work. There is no guarantee that even that it will work. The drive could of been writing info when it happened and there may be 'open' sectors. As far as drying it out. Place the hard drive in a sealable (Tupperware) container with rice. The rice will absorb the moisture, true descant would be best. As far as taking the 'disc' out, that is a very very risky idea, drives are built in clean rooms and I've heard horror stories about people just wanting to took inside. I would maybe plug in a spare drive (beg, borrow or *not* steal) to make sure all the rest of the components are ok. If the info is really valuable to you there are companies that will dissect the drive and can recover the info of the platters, though not cheaply.

 

To make sure we're talking the same lingo:
PC/Computer/Desktop(or laptop) = The whole comp
CPU = The computer's equivalent of our brain stem
RAM/Memory = The computer's equivalent of our short-term memory
Hard Drive/HDD = The computer's equivalent of our long-term memory

Your wife spilled the drink on the hard drive, which is indeed where the pictures and files are stored .

I've repaired several components that suffered spills, though I have never done see it happen to a hard drive. Once the power is off, liquid isn't a big deal on electronics. It's simply a matter of removing the water (the rice technique mentioned, or just waiting for it to evaporate) and then some surgery to remove the residue - sugar, milk protein, whatever made the drink different from a glass of water. For that part I use rubbing alcohol, and a make very careful I'm not carrying a static charge by grounding myself.

The physical damage caused by the actual short is a lot more worrying. The heat is caused by the current running through the liquid that shorted to contacts, rather than through the circuit. This means an unknown amount of current and voltage passed through a random place on the controller board of the hard drive, which means anything could have happened. If you were lucky, the components (resisters, capacitors.. all the little nobbly colorful parts) were saved, and just solder spots or pads conducted the charge. Most likely the controller board suffered irreversible damage, and either the board needs to be replaced as already described, or possibly even the whole hard drive. In either case the only way to find out is to connect the hard drive to a computer to see if it still works, and if not then replace the controller board to see if that fixes it, and if not then the hard drive is dead.

Some very clever companies do offer data retrieval from hard drives that have died. It's an extremely expensive process that costs many many times what the hard drive is worth (perhaps $750), but only you know what the information is worth to you.

With that in mind, here are two services you may want to make use of:
http://www.vantagetech.com/
http://www.divorce.com/

 

I think we reallly need to take a slight step back here and all get on the same page, because I've got this feeling komen and the rest of us are on different ones ...

For explanations of the differences and basics of Hardware, I have a guide HERE

As far as visually identifying the components goes. Going back to complete basics, please look at THIS photo, and tell me which of these has had liquid spilt on it.

TOP RIGHT - large TV looking object = MONITOR
TOP LEFT - RECTANGULAR upright object = TOWER
BOTTOM LEFT - small object you use to control computer = MOUSE
BOTTOM RIGHT - object with letters and numbers = KEYBOARD.

Sorry if I sound belittling in any way, sometimes it's just necessary to go back to absolute basics to identify the exact issue.

 

I actually just realised 94dgrifs post has Hyperlinks too ... please take a look through both posts and see of you can find what the liquid was spilt on.

Sorry dgrif I didn't even realise half asleep ...

 

Thank you....I have found a place that does sell the pcb, but you said something about whether it was transfering or had open sectors ... could you clarify ... thank you for your appreciation

 

See if I can clarify or maybe confuse, hopefully clarify.

*Sorry i this is a little long winded and wandering, I am drunk on turkey from having to attend three different feasts today*

OK, when a hard drive writes to the platters it does so in sectors or little blocks set aside for each chunk of info. A little Wiki Info on disk sectors. Depending on how the drive is formated controls the size of each sector or you can change the size of the sectors while formating it (not normally done unless the drive is going to be for special use.) In the best case scenario the drive was just setting there spinning not reading or writing. I looked up the PDF of your Seagate Barracuda drive. It is offered in PATA and SATA versions, It shows 3 flavors of the 320gig you said 360gig but I assume that's the drive (I won't get into the drive numbering game, that's a whole other thread.) That isn't really a issue just make sure you get the control board for whichever your drive is. They are physically different connectors and speeds. A google image search of a PATA connector (Also called IDE) and a SATA connector will easily show you which you have, there are now three speeds of SATA but only two in your case and all SATA Seagates I've touched were jumper selectable between 1.5 and 3.0Gb/s. I am sure if you give the supplier the model # of your drive they will set you up with what you need. In a semi bad case scenario if the drive was writing info to the disc when the magic smoke was let out you can at least expect that file to be corrupt. In a more bad case scenario if it was writing to the MBR (Master Boot Record) or to the directory structure or the 'pointers' to where the files are physically located on the platters can be corrupt. These both can be overcome *sometimes* with recovery software. If the data is important and the controller board isn't real expensive I would try that and hope the computer (at least the BIOS) can see the drive. Then you know it is alive, then the data being intact is the next step to look for. Is this the boot (operating system drive, typically C: )? If it is, try not to do much with the computer, even browsing the web because most everything writes to the drive and if you need to goto the next step which if the files are missing is a data recovery program and each new write can be overwriting your 'lost' data, many good examples are available here at MG's. I myself have good luck with GetDataBack (a paid program) I assume you are not using that computer right now, is it a laptop (a cheap multi connector adaptor with a usb connection is a great thing to have) or a desktop that you could slave the drive to, that is the safest way for a shot at data recovery if it comes down to it. Let me know if you're following what I meaning, I sometimes can't get ideas from the brain to the fingers. In the worst case scenario you now have a brick named Seagate. and please if anyone else has any ideas I didn't touch on or skipped over jump right on in.

I have saved a drive that had some important docs on it before by swapping controllers but recently I just tore apart a 500gig Seagate SATA II that suffered the dreaded head crash click of death (no recovery from that, at least not outside of sending it to a data recovery service for $$$, nothing on it was that important to me.)

**I also add, please buy a external and use it frequently, they are getting really cheap and losing data is a terrible feeling. It has happened to many though, me included it's a learning experience that makes it seem like backing up your data is a good idea about 2 minutes too late. (Not picking on you, just everyone always says to back up important stuff, generally too late.) The way the box stores try to up sale people I would almost think they would scare everyone in there with the horror stories to increase sales of external drives. (If Micro Center, Fry's, Best Buy, etc is listening remember that was my sales idea.)


Wow, I did ramble on...

 

LOL, I clicked the links for future reference in case I ever need a serious recovery of my data. The first I had heard of. The second link, it took me a second... well played sir.

 

Re: See if I can clarify or maybe confuse, hopefully clarify.

no that was the most responisive answer i have ever reseaved from any site ever including this one. I did get that ....and ... well i have a friend who is quite knowelegable with the inside of the cpu... the part your talking about and im going to send him this link to read and translate. Thank you very much.... is there anyway I can boost your props for the site... .. thank you

 

Seemed like an appropriate suggestion!

 

My wife said she was playing buble pop on facebook when she spillt the drink..she doesnt know how to transfer stuff and she said no other programs except the basics where open... volume maybe windows live mail

 

I just hope everything works out for you, computers can be the greatest thing in the world or the worst idea ever thought of.