A LaCie Rugged — the orange-bumpered external built for knocks — arrived after losing an argument with a spilled water bottle: no recognition on any machine, no sounds, no signs of life, and critical business and personal files inside. Rugged armour shrugs off drops; electronics and water are a different treaty entirely.
Inspection told the story: no power response pointing at the circuit board, no motor sounds suggesting an electrical short, and visible corrosion already blooming on the PCB — water damage doing what water damage does when a drive sits wet. The response ran in strict order: careful disassembly to stop further contamination, controlled drying and cleaning of the corroded components, then micro-soldering repair of the damaged board with a compatible donor PCB standing in where components were beyond saving. Power restored, the drive was stabilised just long enough to matter — and cloned sector by sector to a recovery system, with the file structure rebuilt from the image rather than the patient.
98% of the data was recovered and verified — the business documents and personal files both — and returned on a new external drive. The unrecoverable sliver sat in sectors the corrosion had reached first. The case’s lesson is the one the water-damage page leads with: the drive that arrives wet and unpowered recovers; the drive that got dried on a radiator and ‘tested’ keeps the damage forever.
Liquid-killed externals are a bench staple: the data usually survives the splash — what it can’t survive is power and DIY drying. The water & fire page has the do-not list. The first step never changes: a free diagnostic and a fixed written quote before anything is at stake — or call 0131 202 0491 and describe what happened.