Your hard drive has taken on water and it no longer works. A common situation especially with laptops or external Data Recovery from hard drives that failed. For example, your PC is in a backpack with a bottle of water. A small leak of water towards the PC makes it in-operational!
Following the storm in 2010, we received a lot of requests for hard drive recovery that had taken on water damage. In this article, we try to clarify the issue of water and its influence on the hard disk. In particular on the possibility of data recovery.
It is recalled that the hard disk is an aquaphobic electromechanical machine, because this can concern all the elements of the hard disk. When exposing the hard drive to water, there is a high chance of damaging it.
The effects and consequences of immersing the hard drive in water strongly depend on the duration of this exposure. We can differentiate between a furtive, short or long exposure.
A short-term immersion of hard disk or PC containing a hard disk (or SSD), will surely affect the electronic parts. In more rare cases the mechanical parts if the protective elements are of poor quality.
It’s the worst case. Water will definitely get inside the hard drive and hit the drive head, platters, and motor. In the case of an SSD, water can settle below the memory chips.
Whatever the exposure to water by immersion, the hard drive becomes unusable. The electronic parts can oxidize slightly to strongly which can cause a break in the electronic tracks. If the water touches the trays, a layer of limestone or salt may deposit on the trays.
