Hard drive drenched in cider

WeatherMan

Active Member
Hi guys, well the time has finally come, after all these months of me carrying my storage drive in my bag between houses that an accident has happened.

To cut a long story short the strap on my bag broke, a can of cider split/exploded in the bag and covered the drive in all its great wetness. I'm not sure how much liquid went over the drive but the bag ended up with a puddle in the bottom and the can size was 500ml.

This was on Monday, today is Thursday night, I've let the drive sit around and not touched it since, it's dried out a lot but is still very sticky, and I think there is some residue on the PCB itself.

I'm not very confident I'll be be able to recover the contents of the drive, but I do want to try, as it has 5+ years of data on it, and there are no back ups. Whats the best way to proceed?

I was thinking remove the PCB, clean it down with isopropyl alcohol and stick the board + drive in rice for about a week to soak up any excess moisture, if anyone has a better alternative please let me know.

I've heard not to use a hairdryer and I've not got any dehumidifying equipment

Thanks
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
If the information is important then do NOT touch it, you should always make a backup, take it to a professional data recovery specialist, but this can be very expensive.
If the data isn't worth the price require to save it then you are most likely out of luck, all you can do is what you have posted, clean the PCB and put the whole drive in rice and be patient, I would not use a hairdryer as you may blow liquid deeper inside and you may also create humidity from liquid already inside the drive.
 

WeatherMan

Active Member
Thanks Shlouski, the data isn't important no, it's just a few TB of steam games & saves which I can recover some of through the cloud, certainly not worth spending a few hundred pounds to recover from a specialist. I will try as we thought and take the DIY method to recover the drive myself, if it's unrecoverable then It's not a huge deal, as a new drive isn't majorly expensive, I can pick up a new one for around £60 but obviously would prefer not to.

I can easily pick up some rubbing alcohol, how is the best way to apply it to clean the drive?

lint free cloth? or would that attract static
 
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_Pete_

Active Member
I have recovered some electronic circuits, over the years, that have had various liquids spilled over them but it is a very very hit and miss process. I lost far more than I have saved. Having said what do you have to lose? The data is not important you said. I would use a semi stiff dusting brush and some isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) use the brush to work the alcohol into the nooks and crannies on the circuit. leave it to dry out for a couple of days and see what happens. Bottom line is that the platters should be okay as they, should be, sealed in their box. If it doesn't work a data recovery service could, probably, get some or all of the data back or if it's not worth spending that sort of money (it's not that expensive if you look around) bin it.

Only thing I will reiterate, having been there myself, what Shlouski says and back up in future.
 

WeatherMan

Active Member
Thanks for the replies so far chaps, I've got the board off and it's pretty dry but still a bit sticky. There was a foam padding insert behind the drive which is very sticky and still damp, I can try and dry this out but I don't think it'll get all the cider gunk out, is it worth washing it with water and then letting it fully dry?

Also I've got some surgical spirit, but it is 25 years old, and I am unsure of it's alcohol percentage, so probably best off picking up some up to date rubbing alcohol, I think i'll use cotton buds to spread the rubbing alcohol, seems a pretty common method on the net.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I'd fully wash the foam. If the drive wasn't under power at the time of getting wet, theoretically if you get the PCB clean and fully drive it should be fine. I'd be more worried about the internal disk being gunked up.
 

WeatherMan

Active Member
Thanks, just washed that now and letting it sit to dry, the drive was off at the time as it was in my bag, and I'm pretty confident I can clean the pcb down, I may get lucky and have not had any kind of splashes enter the HDD vent hole, it doesn't look like any did but I will find out soon! This HDD has has been pretty good to me, it's actually survived a 8ft fall down solid wood stairs onto a tiled floor in the past, thanks to the cat knocking it off the top of another bag, I guess I should start backing up and pick up a portable drive so I don't keep switching this one in and out of PC's and carrying it around where accidents can easily happen
 

WeatherMan

Active Member
The foam padding piece is now totally dry, I left it outside in the sun, and is no longer sticky, and I also picked up a fresh bottle of surgical spirit/rubbing alcohol at the chemist which was rated at 95% alcohol, I've cleaned down the board with a cotton bud dipped in the spirit and also cleaned up the connectors on the drive which the board connects to, as well as all other electrical traces I could see that may have had spillage on them, the board is now in a bowl of rice to dry out fully. How many days do you recon I should wait before I power the drive back up?
 

WeatherMan

Active Member
Drive powered back up without issue, I then connected the data cable, the drive read and wrote fine, ran an error check with no issues as well as checked out the smart status which shows 0 issues too, I will be backing up as soon as I can get a spare drive, are there any other tools to check the drive status that may be useful?
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
Drive powered back up without issue, I then connected the data cable, the drive read and wrote fine, ran an error check with no issues as well as checked out the smart status which shows 0 issues too, I will be backing up as soon as I can get a spare drive, are there any other tools to check the drive status that may be useful?

Personally I would avoid using the drive. The first thing I would be doing is pulling off the most important data to me, then I would try to get it all backed up, only then would I start testing it to access whether or not I would trust it with future data.
 

JaredDM

Active Member
Sorry, I'm late coming into this thread. I'm not on this forum every day. Happy to hear you got it resolved.

For cases like yours, where we suspect that the PCB may not be bad but just gummed up with syrup, we do basically the same thing. We generally soak it overnight or for 4+ hours in a tub of 100% isopropyl alcohol, occasionally give it a wipe with a soft bristle paintbrush. Then we leave it out for several hours to dry (no rice necessary since 100% IPA dries quite fast on its own).

This method has worked well for a lot of MacBook SSDs that are right against the bottom cover and get ruined by juice, soda, spitoon juice (yes we actually had that), etc. that gets into the laptop through the back vents.

If you want to replace the PCB with a new one as a more permanent solution, just let me know the model and I'll tell you what needs to be done to make the replacement compatible.
 
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