Read this before you do anything else
Do not power it on, and take it off charge. Corrosion is the clock.
Current through wet circuitry drives corrosion and shorts components that would otherwise have survived. The damage continues for as long as the device is powered and for as long as it stays wet, which means the two things that matter are cutting the power and getting it looked at quickly. Drying it out on a shelf is not neutral: corrosion progresses while it sits, and the residue left behind by evaporating water, especially salt water or anything sugary, keeps attacking the board after the moisture has gone.
Emergency
Water damaged external hard drive
If your external hard drive has got wet, the most useful thing on this page is above this paragraph, and it is free. What follows is what the fault usually turns out to be, how recoverable this class of failure is, and what it would cost, including the cases we would tell you to take elsewhere.
What this usually turns out to be
The part of a hard drive that holds your data is sealed. The head and platter chamber is closed at the factory and vented only through a filtered port, so liquid that gets into the enclosure usually reaches the circuit board on the underside and stops there. That is a considerably better position than it sounds: a corroded board is a replaceable part in front of an untouched drive. The plastic outer shell adds another layer the water has to get through first. What does the real damage is current. A wet board that is powered corrodes and short-circuits far faster than one left alone.
A portable external is a normal drive inside a plastic shell with a USB bridge board. The bridge fails far more often than the drive does, which is why a dead external is better news than a dead internal.
Corrosion on the circuit board
Progressive, and it continues while the device sits waiting. This is why a water job is genuinely time-sensitive in a way most other failures are not.
Short circuit from powering it on wet
Often the actual killer rather than the water itself. Components survive immersion and then fail on power-up.
Sealed platters, untouchedbetter news
The platter chamber is sealed at the factory and vented only through a filter. Water frequently reaches the exterior and the circuit board and stops there, leaving the recorded surface completely intact.
What to check first on an external hard drive
- Disconnect it from power immediately and leave it disconnected.
- Stand it so any liquid inside can drain out rather than pool on the board, and leave it somewhere dry and warm but not hot.
- Note what the liquid was. Salt water, pool water and anything sugary are far more aggressive than clean tap water, and they keep corroding after the surface looks dry.
What not to do
Do not plug it in to check whether it still works, at any point, including after it feels dry. Residue left behind by evaporated liquid is conductive, and applying power to a board with that residue on it is what turns surface corrosion into a burnt track.
Try this before you pay anyone
There is one thing to do, and several popular things not to
- Take it off power. If it is a phone, take it off the charger and do not press the power button to check.
- If it is still wet, keep it that way rather than letting it dry with residue in place, because a device that dries with contamination on the board corrodes underneath it. Get it to someone quickly instead.
- Note what the liquid was. Salt water, pool water, and anything sugary are substantially more aggressive than clean tap water, and it changes how the board has to be treated.
Skip the rice. It cannot reach the inside of a sealed device, it does nothing for corrosion already underway, and it costs the days that decide a water job. A hair dryer drives moisture further in and can lift components. Neither of these is a small mistake. They are the two that most often turn a recoverable water job into an unrecoverable one.
How recoverable this is
Better than most people expect, and it degrades with every day of delay. On hard drives the platter chamber is sealed, so the recorded surface is often perfectly intact and the work is on everything around it. On phones and SSDs the memory package frequently survives a board that does not. What consistently makes the difference is elapsed time and whether it was powered on while wet.
What moves it, for your device specifically:
- How long since it got wet, and whether it has been powered since
- What the liquid was: salt, pool and sugary liquids are far more aggressive
- Whether corrosion has reached the storage itself or is confined to the surrounding board
- Whether the sealed enclosure kept the liquid out of the head and platter chamber
We will not give you a percentage for your device, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nobody can know what is recoverable until the media has been imaged and read. What is above describes this class of failure; your drive gets its own answer after an assessment, in writing, at no cost.
What it costs
from $449
Failing or degraded drive (imaging required)
Bad sectors, slow reads, drops out under load. Imaged region by region on hardware built for unstable media, worst areas left until last.
What moves a job within its band: capacity, how much of the media is unstable, whether the filesystem is encrypted, and how much of the drive has to be read before the files you need are reachable. You get one fixed figure after the assessment and it does not move afterwards. If we can’t recover what matters to you, there is no recovery fee.
Other faults on an external hard drive
Next step
Tell us what failed.
Free assessment. Fixed quote before recovery starts. No recovery, no fee. Sydney drop-off or Australia-wide by tracked post.