Pc Underwater

Hello

After some recent flooding, I'm trying to learn something new. I have been given a Pc that was under 6 inches of water 48 hours ago. I have removed the drives and memory and there is no water. It has evidently already drained and dried. It does not look dirty, maybe a little bit of dried dust residue, but no mud or anything like that I see. I have no idea if it was on or not at the time of flooding.

The first priority is the My Documents and Shared Documents folders. At what point is it safe to plug this hard drive into my Usb - Sata adapter and try it. Should I try to open the hard drive and see if there is water inside it first?

Is there a protocol or a guide for the rest of the Pc? Sorry if this has already been covered I did a quick search and didn't find anything up to date on the subject.

Thanks,
Jim

 

If you open the hard-drive it will never work again. They were assembled in clean rooms that are better than hospital clean. The smallest particle of dust or even smoke between the heads and the platters renders them useless.

 

I don't have an answer for you. If I were facing the same issue, first I'd use a blow drier on the lowest, coolest setting and hold it near the power connectors to dry up any moisture near that area. Then I'd probably wait about 5 - 7 days to be sure all moisture was gone.
The drives are sealed but I really don't know how tightly they'd hold out moisture after being submerged in water for some hours.

 

Sounds good. So I am definitely not going to open the hard drive. I will air out the case for at least a week before I give it a try.

I think the office had only about 6" of water - I doubt the hard drive was completely submerged, but maybe partly. Probably no more than a couple hours tops.

@Puppywunder58 - cool avatar - I miss Bill the cat and the whole Outland bunch!

 

I would put it in a warm place for about 48 hours or longer depending on the time frame,I dry everything out on the hot water tank,it's like my little drying lab :-D

BTW I've set the hot water for 80 degrees it never gets any hotter than that but its plenty for force drying,most electronic goods are fine under around 200C,you may have heard that hard drives can overheat at 40-50C but that's only when the bearing is spinning,the lubricant becomes ineffective at those temps.

 

I have heard leaving components in "rice" can help draw out any moisture but I would be sieving the rice firstly to remove any "dust".

http://lifehacker.com/269427/dry-out-your-soaked-gadgets-in-rice

 

A lot depends on whether or not the PC was on or not when the water hit it . . .

I'd leave the hard-drive be for at least 72 hours if using heat or, like Bold Eagle suggested, rice or some other moisture drawing agent. I have used rice to rescue a cell phone, but not a hard-drive - make sure you take steps to protect the exposed circuit board from static discharge (since I have no idea what the static charge potential is on a bag of dry rice :-D). Rikky's hot water heater suggestion is also worth a try - like his, mine maintains a pretty constant temperature level on top, but doesn't get so hot it will damage electronics. (I never thought of that before, Rikky . . . next time I need to dry something I'll give that a shot! )

I certainly suggest using some kind of aid to dry out the drive and not just set it aside on a shelf.

I second the notion of using an external enclosure to try the drive when dry as being the best way to go.