Cat + Water + Laptop= Disaster

December 16, 2005 10:31 PM

H2OFilter: Laptop disaster! The cat spilled a vase-full of water on the keyboard of my Dell Latitude C800 laptop. I managed to avoid getting the thing completely drenched, but the machined did shut down immediately, unprompted.

I let it dry (as much as I could in a few hours) and then tried restarting it-- nothing. I'm going to let it sit for a few days to dry completely and try again, but I'm pretty sure it's going to end in tears.

Here's the question: I want to take the data from the hard drive and recover it. I think the drive is fine (and dry). I've heard from friends about buying a drive enclosure at a computer store and turning a laptop drive into a USB drive, but I've never done anything like this. I want to hear what MeFites think I ought to do here-- remove the drive and turn into into a secondary drive or just send the thing to a data recovery company and get them to extract the data? [Oh, and I did back up, but there are a few very recent things in there I don't want to lose.]

Help!

posted by yellowcandy to computers & internet (14 comments total)

You need a 2.5" USB hard drive enclosure. XPCGear has a bunch, and really.. any of them should work. The C800 is a few years old, so as long as you stick with a recent enclosure, you should be able to remove the HD from the laptop, attach it to the enclosure (read the instructions) and mount it via USB on another machine. It will mount as another drive. Simply copy the files you need, and continue to use the enclosure as need be.

Finally, I've seen this before (a lot). Provided you have propped the laptop up (keyboard facing down) there is a pretty good chance that it will be operable in a few days.
posted by purephase at 10:40 PM on December 16, 2005

I second what purephase says.

Don't send it to a data recovery service right away -- big waste of money, unless they only charge 30 or 40 bucks.

On my Dell C600, one screw on the underside of the laptop allows the removal of the hard drive. A 2.5" IDE to USB2.0 drive enclosure will be pretty cheap: here's a bargain basement one for $12, minus shipping.

The hard drive is quite probably OK. Hooking it up in such an enclosure will tell you (if it's OK, Windows, Linux, or Mac should be able to see files on it. Well, if it's NTFS it might be a little harder for the latter two).

And I second giving it a few days to dry out: the entire laptop might yet work again. Only send the HD to a data recovery expert if plugging it in with an external enclosure still gets you nowhere.
posted by teece at 10:55 PM on December 16, 2005

there have been a number of simular questions about drenched laptops on the green in the past year or so. Some of those threads had some good advice.
posted by edgeways at 11:16 PM on December 16, 2005

this is going to sound really, really dumb, but it might be worth a shot:

refrigerate your laptop.

the air inside refrigerators is pretty damn dry, except for the superveggiesection in superawesomefridges. i had a waterlogged keyboard that didn't work, and figgered i had nothing to lose by shoving it in the cold.

just remember that after leaving it in the fridge for several days to let it sit at room temperature for a good long while, too, to avoid zapping summin with the condensate.

i make no guarantees, tho. could be too late! water + electricity = bad, especially so if you try turning the sucker on repeatedly. best o luck.
posted by herrdoktor at 11:57 PM on December 16, 2005

Another option, slightly cheaper than the enclosure is a simple USB to IDE adapter, like this one (I have no affiliation with tiger direct, but I do shop there on occasion, feel free to look elsewhere). I have one and find it mighty handy, and more portable than an enclosure. It can be used for both 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives.
posted by borkencode at 11:58 PM on December 16, 2005

My cat did almost the same thing to my D600, only it was grapefruit juice. I dont know how the C800 works, but the keyboard comes off quite easily off mine; google for directions. There should also be a service manual on dell's website. Take the keyboard off, and check visually inside for liquid. You might just need a new keyboard. Dell replaced mine under warranty (but it was a business account).
posted by cgg at 12:08 AM on December 17, 2005

This happened to mine a few weeks ago and had the same symptoms you described. I left it next to a big fan and after a day it would start to boot up, but shut itself off after about five seconds. After three days under the fan it finally started up again and it was perfectly fine, so I think you should probably just leave it be for now.
posted by borkingchikapa at 12:09 AM on December 17, 2005

I posted this in an earlier thread about an iPod and water, and thought I would pass it along here. I have no reason to think it wouldn't work just as well for a laptop (albiet, with much more rice...)

Take it apart as best you can. Immediately. Fill a clear plastic bag with uncooked rice, and mix up the pieces in the rice. Seal the bag, and put it under a bright/warm-to-hot lamp and let it sit for at least 24 hours.

When that's done, put it back together and see if it works. This has saved many an electronic gizmo in the past (including my cell phone when it went for a swim last weekend), but I don't know anyone who has tried it with an iPod.

Good luck--let us know how it goes!
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:43 AM on December 17, 2005

Just this week I had to go the external enclosure route. My wife's computer just borked it ("ntloader not found", or whatever), and we don't have another computer to put her HDD into (Powerbook, Mac Mini and an old Viao), so i picked up an external usb 2.0 enclosure from TigerDirect, who I would recommend. Hooked it up to the Powerbook and worked perfectly to reclaim the contents of the HDD.

I saw the USB to IDE connector things and, for a lower price, they pretty much to the same thing, but without the fancy external case. I decided that I could do with a permanent external drive, so I went the enclosure route, but if you have no need for an external drive, the USB to IDE adapter solution would be cheaper.

As for the enclosure I bought - I picked up an Vantec NexStar. It's a little funny looking and over the top in the "bling" stakes, but it's a decent case. While more expensive than the cheapest available enclosures, I read some really bad reviews of those, so I decided to go for something better rated, and, so far, it's been great. Super easy to install, and works like a charm.
posted by jcruden at 5:59 AM on December 17, 2005

I would dismantle the computer and quadruple the drying times. I can tell you from experience with electronics that if water gets in some well-protected cracks and crannies, it will take eons for it to dry out. I have opened up water-exposed stuff that's sat around for weeks and have been astounded to see water drops still in there. If you don't be thorough about it, then you'll have to assume that water is still on some of the electronics and decide whether the risk is worth it.
posted by rolypolyman at 10:10 AM on December 17, 2005

Sort of along the same lines to what borkencode suggested, check out this page.

It is people selling 2.5" IDE to 3.5" IDE & Power conversion cables (some with metal brackets, as well).

The first one listed is $6.99. I knew I had seen one of these before, but could not find it last night. With that, you could mount the 2.5" laptop hard drive inside a regular PC. It's not as convenient as external USB, but it's often cheaper, and the connection is going to be simple IDE, rather than a conversion to USB mass storage.

But that's assuming the laptop is really dead, again. I suspect strongly it will work again after being thoroughly dried out (and next time, don't turn it back on so soon ;-)
posted by teece at 11:11 AM on December 17, 2005

Just FYI, I spilled a whole bottle of mineral water all over my Toshiba laptop about a year ago, and it also crashed immediately. After about three-four days of lying face-down on a bedding of paper towels it booted up fine, and has been working like a charm ever since.
posted by ori at 1:47 PM on December 17, 2005

I'd get an IDE - USB cable first, to see if the drive works. Benefit of this is that most come with bits so they work with 2.5" and 3.5", so you can test other hard drives in future. If it works, get an enclosure. If it doesn't off to the data retrieval men it goes!

Oh, for the IDE and enclosure, you may need a "bridge" (tiny bit of metal that slots over two pins on the drive, so that it's a slave drive). If you're not sure if there's one in the IDE or enclosure box, just ask an assistant. Should just give you one for free if you're buying something.
posted by djgh at 2:51 PM on December 17, 2005

Thanks to everyone who answered and offered some genuinely valuable assistance! I dried the laptop out for three days in a warm room (keyboard out, battery and floppy drive removed, underside doors for RAM and motherboard also removed), and then rebooted it earlier this evening. It worked perfectly-- I just had to go through the BIOS setup again. I'm actually writing this from the machine right now (as it backs up more recent data).

Thanks also for the IDE/USB info-- I'm going to take another old laptop drive out of its housing and turn it into a backup using that technique, I think. Excellent work AskMefi!
posted by yellowcandy at 10:28 PM on December 19, 2005