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 USB stick
If your USB stick 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
USB sticks survive water remarkably well, and the ones that fail usually fail because someone plugged them in wet. There is very little inside: a small board, a controller, and one or two memory packages, all of which tolerate immersion in clean water provided no current is flowing through them at the time. Sticks that have been through a washing machine and dried properly frequently work perfectly afterwards. This is one of the genuinely good outcomes on this site.
The commonest failure is physical: the connector is soldered to a thin board and snaps where the two meet, usually while plugged in.
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.
Storage chip physically intactbetter news
The memory itself is a sealed package with its connections underneath. It commonly survives when the board around it does not, which is what makes chip-level recovery possible.
What to check first on a USB stick
- Do not plug it in. That is the single decision that determines the outcome here.
- Let it dry thoroughly, for longer than seems necessary: a day or more somewhere warm and dry, cap off.
- Then try it once, on a computer where nothing important would be disturbed if it misbehaves.
What not to do
Do not plug it in while damp to check whether it still works, which is overwhelmingly the reason these fail. A dry stick that went through the wash usually works. A wet stick that was plugged in usually does not, and that is a change you make rather than one the water made.
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
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 $249
USB sticks and memory cards
Cameras, dashcams, drones, phones. Includes carving for cards that no longer present a filesystem.
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 a USB stick
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.