house fire

[skyline]

hi new here my house had a fire and i was repareing hard drives and i need to know can smoke damage hard drives if so can the person i am fixing the hard drive fore sue

 

[(*steve*)]

If you are repairing hard drives then you really should know the answer to that question.

If you open the drive to expose the platters you have to (well, you don't have to, but you are strongly advised to) do it in a clean room.

Particles in smoke are larger than the gap between the platter and the disk head. It's really a bad thing to jam stuff between the platter and the head.

Even if the disk remains sealed, smoke contains all sorts of corrosive compounds and when it coats electronic it does them no good at all. Even the carbon in smoke can make things conductive that shouldn't be, leading to problems.

Can they sue? potentially. Did they agree that you would not be liable if your house burnt down?

 

[skyline]

aaah not good the PCB was off but thats it i do know that thay have brethere holes

the person i was pulling data fore was gowing threw a divorse and her ex trashed it the tower but the HDD and PSU ar the ONLY things that work and data is all she wants

 

[(*steve*)]

At the very least you may have to clean the PCB. Is it blackened? Is it visibly smoke affected? Can you smell smoke on it?

As long as it wasn't running and not somewhere that got very hot I wouldn't expect anything got inside.

If all you're doing is getting data off it, then all you need is enough time operating to mirror it to a good drive.

 

[H H Scott]

My wife has had 3 major kitchen fires over a 35 year period - the last one in January 2010.

It took almost 3 months to clean all my audio gear and other stuff which had smoke and soot damage.

Fortunately, my insurers paid.

H H Scott

 

[(*steve*)]

I'd be changing my wife!

 

[H H Scott]

I'd be changing my wife!

Haha

Better the devil you know. The cause of the fires in each instance was with the objective to feed me. I'm a chipaholic. She put a pot of cooking oil on the stove, turns it up to "9" and then goes off to yak to her pals on the phone/read the paper or mark schoolbooks.

Regards

H H S

 

[axoltl]

We had a similar incident involving hamburgers. Although the fire services were called, the hamburgers did not survive.

Still, it was slightly less scary than the time, many, many years ago, my mother decided to use petrol as lighter fluid on the BBQ.

 

[H H Scott]

Ours was a bit more serious. My home was soot-damaged throughout and all furnishings had to be removed and stored in my double garage. My cars had to stay out on my driveway and as I use my lathe and mill for work, the machines could not be used either and 3 months of turnover was lost while trademen were all over the house to repair and scrub and repaint things. Thereafter I lost another few weeks as all the euipment used inside had to be cleaned of soot and setup again.

H H S