Help - Water was spilled on harddrive

Biopsychosocial · Post by **Biopsychosocial** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 1:18 pm

I was doing a routine flush of my watercooling system after i just installed my new setup and the tube at the end of the cycle was pumping water into a bucket...or so i thought. I turned around after nothing more than atleast 30 seconds and it had popped out of the bucket and was running down the face of my tower. I use a CM Stacker -- and for those of you who don't know what im yet referring to, the entire FACE of the front of this tower is nothing but mesh grill, probably 80%, so a great amount of water went inside. Luckily nothing was harmed b/c most components are towards the ceiling in this case.
With the exception of this secondary hard drive, nothing else was harmed. The water consisted of distilled water with 20% water wetter, i would say it looks like the harddrive didn't get doused too thoroughly, just enough to stop it from working apparently.
I've gone through startup and it isn't detecting that secondary drive. Any suggestions on what to do with this? Open it up and let it dry? RMA the sucker? Jeez that's so saddening, please help. Thanks.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 1:44 pm

My guess is the circuit board on the bottom of the drive got wet, while there was electricity running through it, and BAM, got toasted.

Can replace the circuit board from one from an identicle drive, if you have one. I doubt it's your platters, spindle, and arm that got damaged, just that electronic circuit board.

Hard to know exactly what got wet on your hard drive. Ribbon cable where it connected? Molex power where it connected?

Seeing as you H2O cool and this may happen again, if anything electronic gets wet, as long as there is no power to it when it gets wet, you can usually try them off fine, and they'll work. You can put motherboards and floppy drives through your dishwasher and they'll still work long as they're dry before you plug them back in.

The Dude · Post by **The Dude** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 2:00 pm

Take the drive out of the PC and use a hair dryer to remove any moisture that may still be on it. Then put it back in and try it again.

poptom · Post by **poptom** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 3:36 pm

The Dude wrote:Take the drive out of the PC and use a hair dryer to remove any moisture that may still be on it. Then put it back in and try it again.

Or just let it air dry. I would guess there is moisture in the connector sockets.

Gandalf · Post by **Gandalf** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 3:53 pm

Let it dry! good luck

Biopsychosocial · Post by **Biopsychosocial** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:02 pm

well i did what you guys said and left it in front of a fan for a while; nice and dry now. plugged it in and it worked

thanks guys, i can always depend on the crew here to bail me out. take care! ~brian

Cypher · Post by **Cypher** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:42 am

Well there you go luckily there were no shorts.

Most boards are cleaned with some sort of liquid ranging from water to isopropyl alcohol.
In fact water itself isn't conductive, it's the minerals and other elements in it that are. A little something I learned from working in electronic manufacturing for years.

Mad_Haggis · Post by **Mad_Haggis** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 1:04 am

Hey Sito, tell all about windex/beer/sound card