Wet laptop recovery

In followup to this thread, I finally reassembled the laptops that were in the monsoon at last weekend's autocross.  They got hidden under a tarp during the worst of it, but they were exposed to a terrific storm for a bit.  There is a 15" HP laptop and (3) 13" Dell ATG laptops.

Last Saturday upon getting home, I pulled all the batteries and left the laptops open in a warm, dry room for a week.  I did not do the rice trick because research says you are more likely to do harm than good that way.  On the main HP laptop, I also popped the keyboard out to let it dry underneath better.  None of the computers had visible water inside, but all were exposed.

This Sunday, after a week's drying time, I reassembled them all and tried to fire them up.  The Dell ATG's bitched about having been improperly shut down, but they all booted normally and seem to be running well.  2 are undamaged and 1 has some moisture behind the screen causing bright spots and a subtle diagonal hatch pattern that is barely visible.  I will probably have to pop that screen apart and clean / dry it out.

The HP laptop is a different story, and it's the one I can least afford to lose.  It's an HP 15-F162dx Notebook.

Upon power up, the HP immediately went to a black screen saying there was no operating system installed.  I did a RAM check from that screen, and the memory checks out OK.  Hard disk check, on the other hand, indicates that there is no hard drive installed.  Ruh roh... it's an SSD, luckily, but the computer won't even see it, let alone boot from it.  In going through HP's recovery procedure, I reset the BIOS, but no luck.

This drive not only has a bunch of licensed software on it that it might be a pain to reinstall, but it also has my only record of the interrupted event.  The paper audit backup was destroyed in the flood, and for whatever reason, the online live results were failing to post even before the rain hit.

So what's my next step? 

Should I pull the drive out (which basically requires disassembling the laptop to the molecular level) and put it in an external enclosure to see if I can access it from another computer? 

How do I test the motherboard to see if that's good?

What other steps should I try?  Thanks in advance.

My first thought would be just like you suggest about the external enclosure; it's weird/unfortunate that this machine buries it so badly. But since the really important stuff is what's on the drive, cutting straight to removing every variable that isn't the drive itself seems like the surest solution.

Hoping someone with better disaster recovery chops has a brighter idea.

If you're getting a no Operating System Found error that means the MBR is probably damaged. Best thing to do you would be to try to hook the HDD to another computer via a cable. If you can see it from another computer you might be able to clone the damaged disk and put a new MBR on it with the recovery tools.

Alternatively you could straight up try booting from a recovery disk and try the Windows Repair tool.

Just a warning SSD's memory is all or nothing with very little or no indication of impending failure. I'd be leery of continuing to use the SSD if you can repair the MBR. You likely won't do any more damage by hooking it up with an external cable but some data may not be recoverable without professional services and even then it can be iffy.

Duke said:Ruh roh... it's an SSD, luckily, but the computer won't even see it, let alone boot from it.

Ohoho that's not lucky at all, SSDs are much harder to recover data from. Try it in an enclosure/external adapter, if you still can't read anything from it there (try to list the partitions with diskmgmt.msc or fdisk/gparted) the only option left is to drop it off with a suitcase full of cash at a data recovery shop.

I have a relatively recent backup of the drive.  I don't keep much data on it - the main documents are all hosted on Google Drive, and I can reload my autocross database from the online backup made the night before the event.  There is some licensed software installed on the drive which may be problematic to reinstall.  I back up the system files as well as everything else.

If I lose the event I lose the event, and that's not the end of the world.

I'm more concerned about getting the computer operational again.

Honestly I think it's much more likely that the laptop's hard drive controller (part of the mainboard) is damaged than it is that the SSD was damaged by water. SSDs are far more resilient to impact or water damage than hard drives.

Pull the SSD and get a SATA to USB adapter and recover it on another computer like Gameboy said. The other computer should see it as another external. Adapters to for anywhere from $10 to $30.

Grrrr.  I never really liked this laptop anyway, so I probably don't want to spend main board money on it, if that's even the issue.

So I'm looking at used Dell ATGs on eBay.  The ones that are configured the way I want have touch screens, which I don't want.  The ones configured the way I want without touch screens all have Win10 on them.

I'll send you my SATA to USB adapter if you need one, no charge, I don't need it anymore. 

Thank you, that would be appreciated.  If it's not convenient, I can pick one up.

In reply to Duke :

Just send me an address and I'll get it out to you. Esseeno at gmail

Hey I get to be the guy who writes:

"Based on the title, I came in here expecting a whole different discussion!"

Duke said:

Grrrr.  I never really liked this laptop anyway, so I probably don't want to spend main board money on it, if that's even the issue.

So I'm looking at used Dell ATGs on eBay.  The ones that are configured the way I want have touch screens, which I don't want.  The ones configured the way I want without touch screens all have Win10 on them.

If you have to run Windows, Win10 is the best version...

In reply to GameboyRMH :

But it's just so berking annoying.

Duke said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

But it's just so berking annoying.

By default, yes, but it's pretty easy to turn all that stuff off. Start by turning everything off in the privacy screen on setup, then disable the lock screen ads (yes, a $200 OS comes with ads...) and maybe Cortana.

But even that - there are so many different ways to get to stuff, even worse than usual for Windows.  Why is the Settings interface different from the Control Panel?  Why have both?  Why make it so hard to declutter the interactions and just get down to the business of actually using the computer?

Yes it's not ideal, but if you're running Windows, there's no getting away from it...not even if you hide on Win7 for another year and a half until it hits its EOL date, and you're forced to upgrade for security updates anyway.

I think they should put all the Settings stuff under the Control Panel and get rid of Settings, myself.

If you can run trial versions of the software you use, you could try them on Wine on a Linux computer...maybe you can get away from Windows entirely.

In reply to Duke :

Why is Candy Crush pre-installed on my Enterprise editions of Windows 10?

Microsoft made a lot of the decisions they did in order to minimize the number of security risks in the system. Example, I hate that Windows 10 has a tendency to just restart the machines when applying updates "intelligently." Typically this means I've left my desk to use the bathroom or grab coffee and I end up losing work (No Windows doesn't respect the Active Hours all the time before anyone asks.) Yea it's annoying but the reason this exists is due to the fact that if you give users the option of when to apply updates, most of them won't do it for lengthy periods of time. It's heavy handed but with the security mess that XP and 7 were I understand why they did it.

It's the same with a lot of settings. A good example is the mess that's happening with Fortnight right now as Epic is showcasing how circumvent Androids 3rd party app controls to side load the app. Again I understand why Epic chose this route (30% of all in-game purchases is a lot of money) but there's at least a dozen fake sites and apps out there now which normal users keep installing and infecting the devices with malware. Some security setting options are hidden away for a reason.

The0retical said:

In reply to Duke :

Example, I hate that Windows 10 has a tendency to just restart the machines when applying updates "intelligently." Typically this means I've left my desk to use the bathroom or grab coffee and I end up losing work (No Windows doesn't respect the Active Hours all the time before anyone asks.) Yea it's annoying but the reason this exists is due to the fact that if you give users the option of when to apply updates, most of them won't do it for lengthy periods of time.

I call this Russian Shutdown Roulette. Real fun when it happens on a presentation laptop...

In reply to GameboyRMH :

It's made it to the point where I use the "delay updates for 35 days" option then, two days before any presentation, I check how much time is left. If less than 2 days. I turn updates on, let them run, reboot twice over the course of the day just to make sure, and pause updates for 35 days again just to make sure it doesn't do anything weird.

I fell like all I need now is some chicken bones, blood of a virgin, and a couple of candles for the ritual to be complete.

Before the April update, the cute trick was to make a shadow copy of Windows whenever the hell it felt like it. Naturally that uses the majority of the disk resources which brings things to a halt. That's stopped fortunately but I still hate the hell out of Win 10.

The plot thickens!  Dunh dunh dunh...

It's not an SSD after all.  It's a Toshiba 750gb platter drive.  Wups.

I'm not heartened by the marks on the stainless steel plate of the drive bay, or by evidence of corrosion under the slip sheet on the bottom of the drive:

It's a little hard to get a picture of due to the plastic slip sheet, but there is a small amount of whitish powder under one corner of the slip sheet, and some on the motor housing:

Should I even try to run this drive?

Not sure if I should take it out of the rubber chassis mount and try to get the plastic sheet off so I can clean under it?

If so, what should I use?  A q-tip with a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol?

Or is moving further a job for the pros?

Any advice from the daytime crowd?  Thanks.

I would wipe the board off with isopropyl alcohol, let it dry thoroughly, and try it in an external enclosure. If the electrical portion is bad, it's not going to make anything worse since you've already powered it up.

I've gotten worse looking drives to run, even pulled data off of them. I didn't know at the time, but I had a mouse living in a tower, and yea, the drive was trashed. 

It's been a while now since that got rained on, it might spin up. For how long though, that's hard to say.

I will also offer, don't give up if the adapter doesn't give you immediate access. Even with good drives it sometimes takes a couple tries.