Flooded Computer

[Tosh McCaber]

My friends' laptop suffered the consequence of a flood in their house, whilst it lay on the floor, which rendered it inoperable. They have successfully claimed on their insurance policy, the consequence being that they will receive a replacement laptop- good news! However, the bad news is that the old laptop will be taken away (as they expected).

The problem is the data stored on their hard drive. If the hard drive is still operational, they do not want their personal data potentially being used by whoever the computer eventually arrives at.

Is there any way that the hard drive can be analysed to extract the data, if it is still there? Would this be part of their insurance company claim?

Any suggestions appreciated!

[Devlin Carnet]

Try asking the insurance company for a salvage price for the laptop, you may be able to keep it.

[vapilot2004]

The sooner the better. Corrosion and time are well known collaborators

The HD could be removed by a local tech, dried and possibly reanimated and backed up before shipping the water logged lappie to the insurance cos
approved repair station.

Good Luck to them!

[effortless]

HDDs rarely drown. I know this from experience. The rest of the laptop would, most likely, dry out. If total immersion has taken place then the Cmos batterty will be discharged. I have seen pcbs tottaly soaked butr the only ones that were destroyed were the ones that were only damp in certain parts. There was shorting which damaged them.

A hair dryer is a great bit of kit.

[Saintsman]

I had a recent insurance claim. Buying back the damaged laptop was prohibitive but they let me buy the hard drive for about £12.

If you go that route and the HD fits your new machine, save the data to a memory stick and download it to the new drive when you fit it back in.

[419]

If you can't buy back the laptop or hard drive, a good strong magnet waved over the hard drive a few times would stop most efforts at recovering any data.

[boguing]

I wouldn't risk letting it out of my sight. The hard drive will be under a cover on the bottom of the case, usually two screws. Drive is held in with one screw. Slide it out. Write a note saying why you've removed it and put the cover back on.

Did this for a friend a couple of weeks ago, and we've heard nothing back, if they ever opened it up I'd be very surprised.

If you want to either borrow an adaptor or send me the drive to get the data off onto a cd/dvd send me a pm.

[Bushfiva]

A USB-to-2.5" drive cable costs almost nothing. Buy the cable, pull the drive out, if it spins up (which it probably will, water usually doesn't get through the breather hole) grab the data you want then wipe the disk.

If it doesn't spin up, wash the drive vigorously in distilled water and let it dry for a couple of days. Try again.

If you simply need to destroy the drive, simply drag something sharp across the PCB.

But I think most on the ball companies will understand your desire to destroy the data. You could simply ask the co to let you keep the drive.

[Tosh McCaber]

Thanks to all. They're going to unscrew it, remove it from the laptop, and send it to a friendly computer geek, who will try to extract their data. After which the insurance company can have the (wiped) disk.