Flood Damaged Hard Drive 2 2

[GoGuard]

Thank you technome and micker377 for your wonderful advice.

This is the situation right now. The ata hard drives were submerged under about 10 feet of water and mud for approximately 10-12 hours. After the water and mud receded and the client thought the computers had "dried out" he powered them up.

They're gone...aren't they.....

 

[IslandCustom]

Probably so. Hard drives are not, as most people think, hermetically sealed. If you look at a hard drive, you'll see a small hole which probably says something like "Do not cover this opening." That's actually an air hole with a filter. I would assume that the drive has water in it...not a good thing.

 

[GoGuard]

Yes, much water and mud. The outer casing had mud in every nook and cranny. My tech tried to dry and freeze one. The other had mud on the actual disk........

 

[technome]

Few ifs....
If the drive elctronics were shorted enough so the drive heads were not activated, all your data is still on the disks, if hermetically sealed, read your last post..

Again, basically the same senario, but not hermetically sealed, the heads never activating, your data might be intact if the surface of the disks have not been scratched by particules, the drive would have to be sent out for data recovery.

If water entered the drive, came in contact with the platters, and the head moved accross the drive, this is what happens..

Heads hover over the drive surface mainatining a distance of a few millionths of an inch from the platter surface, so small a smoke particle, could cause damage if it traveled between the drive head and platters. Water would cause the head to be pulled into the platter surface, physically scoring the disk platter surface

 

[edfair]

I would suspect that the drives never spun up because of the presence of water and mud residue which would tend to glue the platters.
If they didn't spin there wouldn't be any gouges and the platter surfaces aren't water soluble. So the data is probably safe.
If the assumptions are correct it will take a recovery company with cleaning capability to get the innards of the drive clean enough so it could be rebuilt enough to spin up. This all the way from the base, including motor replacement. So it won't be easy and it won't be cheap, but probably doable.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.