EHD / Whatever it is doing now / Water, fire or a surge

Floods · spills · fire · lightning · surges

Water, fire and surges. Dry is not the same as safe, and cool is not the same as sound.

Water reaches an external drive's board long before it reaches the platters, and the damage it does is corrosion, which continues for weeks after the drive looks dry and does its worst when a wet board is powered. Fire warps cases, cooks boards and, with enough heat, the drive itself; the platters, sealed inside, often survive the room they were in. A surge, a lightning strike or a failed adapter takes out the board's regulator and protection diodes first and the drive's own electronics second. In every case the rule is the same: do not power it, do not dry it with heat, bag it as it is, and post it. One drive is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing; board work that moves the figure is explained first.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668

Do not power it, and do not dry it. A wet board powered is a board shorting through the residue; a board dried on a radiator is a board corroding faster. Put the drive in a sealed bag exactly as it is, and post it today if it was seawater or flood water.

What water, heat and current each do, and in what order.

A hard drive is sealed against dust, not against water, but water still has to find its way in through the breather filter, and mostly it does not. What it soaks is the USB board in the case and the drive's own circuit board underneath it, and what it leaves behind when it dries is salt and mineral residue that keeps corroding copper while the drive sits in a cupboard. Power a board in that state and current flows where it should not. On the bench the boards are cleaned, ultrasonically where needed, repaired where corrosion has eaten a track, and only then is the drive brought up, once.

Fire is different. A drive in a house fire is cooked from the outside: the plastic case melts, the boards blister, and if the heat was enough the drive's own lubricants and adhesives fail. The platters, on a metal spindle inside a metal chassis, survive more often than people expect, and the recovery is the drive's mechanics rebuilt around them on a donor chassis. The free look tells honestly whether that is possible.

A surge or a lightning strike arrives through the mains adapter or the USB lead and meets the board's protection diodes and regulator first. On a good day they die and nothing behind them notices; on a bad day the drive's own board takes the hit too, and the motor driver or the preamplifier goes with it. Both are repaired at board level, with the original board preserved on WD's encrypted drives so that its key survives the repair.

What you see, and what it means.

Describe yours to us →

What you see	The usual reason	Where that leaves you
Flooded, never powered since	Residue on the boards	Cleaned, repaired, read once; good odds
Flooded, dried, then powered	Shorts through the residue	Repair first; often still good
Seawater	Fast corrosion	Send it wet, sealed, today
Fire, case melted	Boards cooked; drive possibly heat-damaged	Platters moved to a donor if needed; assessed honestly
Dead after a storm or a surge	Regulator and diodes on the board	Board repair; drive usually fine
Dead after a surge, and hot to the touch	The drive's own board took the hit	Board and ROM work

From the box arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on it the day the parcel is opened, and an engineer settles what has actually failed before anything else happens. A drive that clicks or beeps is not powered again; one that spins is read on our own imaging equipment, never in a computer that will retry and time out and retry. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo hopeful power-ons

The enclosure and its board

Every external drive is two things: the drive, and the USB board that talks to it. The board is checked first, because a failed bridge, a snapped socket or a dead regulator is the whole fault on a good share of jobs, and because on WD's encrypted drives the board holds the key. Where the drive itself has stopped, it comes out of its case onto the bench.

Bridge, socket and power checked firstWD keys kept with their boards

The mechanics, in clean air

Stuck or failed heads are replaced with a matched set from a donor, seized spindles freed, and firmware faults corrected in the drive's service area from the terminal. The drive is not repaired to be used again; it is made to read once, in a single careful pass, and that pass is planned before it begins.

Head and spindle work on a clean benchFirmware and service-area repair

A full image, then the volume

Nothing is worked on live. The whole drive is imaged once, head by head and weak areas last, with reads timed to what the platters can stand, and the file system is put back together on the image. Encrypted volumes are unlocked there too, with the original board's key or the password you supply, and never on the original.

One careful image, head by headThe volume verified end to end

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job3–4 days at the bench

From the bench

Send it wet. A sealed bag with the drive as it is beats a week on a radiator. The bench dries it the right way.
Do not rinse it. Even clean water moves residue into places it was not.
Fire damage is judged at the free look, and the answer is sometimes no. When it is, you hear it before any charge.
A surge finds the cheapest component first, and on most external drives that is a diode on the USB board. Replacing it is quick work.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · EHD-2026-0486JOB LOGGED ✓

A WD My Book that stood in flood water overnight, sent in a freezer bag still damp

The owner did the right things: pulled the plug at the wall, did not dry it, and posted it the next morning. On the bench both boards were cleaned and a corroded regulator on the USB board replaced so that its encryption key could be used. The drive itself had never been touched by the water. Imaged through its own board, it gave back twelve years of family photographs and the flood insurance paperwork.

100% of it recovered4 days here, and back by post

Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

Unplug it at the wall
Bag it as it is, wet if it is wet
Say what the water was: tap, flood, sea, coffee
Post it the same day if it was seawater

What sets us back

Drying it on a radiator or with a hairdryer
Rinsing it
Powering it to see whether it survived
Leaving it in a drawer for a month

Questions answered before you commit.

My external drive got wet. Is the data gone?

Rarely. Water reaches the boards, not the platters, and corrosion on a board is repaired. Do not power it, bag it as it is, and send it.

It was in a fire. Can anything be saved?

Often. The platters survive more than people expect, and the mechanics are rebuilt around them on a donor. The free look tells you honestly, before any charge, whether yours is one of them.

A power cut or a storm killed it. What now?

Usually the board's regulator or protection diodes, with the drive fine behind them. Send it with its adapter; the repair is quick.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look. Board work that moves the figure is explained first.

How long does it take?

3–4 days at the bench for water and surge damage; fire damage is quoted with the figure.

Where this usually leads.

Not spinning, no light →Broken port or bridge board →Hardware-encrypted drives →Desktop 3.5-inch →

Bag it as it is. Do not dry it.

The bench cleans and dries it the right way, repairs what corrosion has reached, and reads it once. The first look is free.

0800 6890668

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