How to Recover Data from Wet Hard Disk?

Hard Disks having large storage capacity makes them one of the most significant data storage devices in your system. However, the downside is that water and electronic devices do not go well together. Same is the case with fire and electronic devices. The latter gets burnt when they are exposed to fire. Therefore, when hard disk drives get immersed in water or catch fire, they stop working in most cases. In such situations, the chances are that you may not be able to use your hard disk again. Nonetheless, you can try to recover your valuable data from Hard Disk. In this article, you will learn how to recover your valued data from a wet or burnt hard disk. 


To restore your wet or burnt hard disk and its data, the first step is to observe the Do’s and Don’ts. This will ease the Data Recovery process. 

Do’s and Don’ts to Recover Data from Wet Hard Disk

What to Do?

Stop using your hard disk immediately – To be able to get back the data from a wet hard drive you should stop using it soon after it gets wet. This is to prevent further damage to your hard disk and the data stored within it. If you do not do so, it may burst, consequently, making all the data stored within it unrecoverable forever. You can employ this by stopping all the ongoing read and write operation to the hard disk and turning off the power to your system. 

Keep your hard disk in wet state – If your hard drive comes in contact with water anyhow, you should not employ any technique to remove water from it. Ideally, you should keep it in a sealed container so as to keep it wet before you hand it over to a professional. This prevents it from corroding and allows the experts to clean and dry the platters without causing any damage to the surface of the platter. 

Handle the wet hard disk with care – You should handle your wet hard drive with utmost care. This is because both the water and minerals in it have the tendency to corrode them. Moreover, they can easily slip and suffer more damage, making recovery of data impossible.

What NOT to Do?

Do not dry your wet hard drive – Although it sounds counter-intuitive, you should not wipe your hard drive if it gets wet. The two big reasons for keeping it in a wet state are as follows: 

  • Drying techniques such as the use of hair dryer, leaving the device out in the sun, etc. that involve heat or wiping with cloth can potentially damage the platters of your hard disk. This can make data recovery next to impossible.  
  • The particles and minerals in water get stuck to the platters of your hard drive if it is dried up. This makes data recovery yet harder than if the platters of your hard disk are wet. 
Note : You should wrap the wet hard drive in a paper towel and put it in an airtight container while removing as much air from the container as possible. 
Do not open your wet hard drive: You should never open your wet hard disk on own. The reason being, the water is liquid and can move anywhere on the hard disk drive. In this way, it can damage the platters where the data is written. This may make data recovery impossible. 

Do not delay to reach out to professionals: You should not wait too long to contact professionals. This is because none but the professionals can deal with situations like as wet and burnt hard disk. They have the expertise to extract complete data from the wet and burnt hard drives. Moreover, the more you wait to contact professionals the more difficult it gets to recover data from it. The reason being, the longer the water stays inside the hard disk it is more likely to reach to other areas of the hard drive, causing further damage.  

Do not try to recover data on own: You should never try to retrieve data on own. This is because data cannot be recovered without the required expertise. If you try to recover data yourself without the necessary techniques and knowledge, it can do more damage to the device making the recovery process impossible. 

Obtain Professional Data Recovery Service

Once you have observed all the above do’s and don’ts, you should next proceed to recover the data from your wet or burnt hard disk. Contact a technician as early as possible. The reason being, the more you delay, the less would be your chances of data recovering complete data through professional data recovery service. 


Choose professional data recovery service who has the facility of Class 100 Cleanroom Lab in South Asia which houses certified & experienced professionals with requisite skills and techniques that help in recovering data from any hard drive irrespective of the severity of the damage. 



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