From Leo's mailbag:
> From: A Computer User
> Sent: March 22, 2007
> To: Ask Leo!
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Ask Leo Question - recovering data from a damaged laptop
>
> Leo,
> Hello! Due to a recently unfortunate child-related accident, I got about
> a cup of water spilled into the keyboard of my laptop. Its a Lenovo/
> IBM Thinkpad R50e. I was told they have a type of "water tray" in them
> so that if this does happen, you can flip it over and let it dry with
> minimal damage. I waited a day - no luck!
>
> On a friend's suggestion, I removed the battery for a day, then put it
> back in and charged it for several hours - still no luck!
>
> My question is two parts:
>
> 1.) Is there any hope and if so, what can I do?
>
> 2.) What recommendations can you make for getting the files off the
> hard drive (which appears to not have had any water reach it) and
> getting them onto a disk or other computer? Any specific products or
> items that would help?
1) I don't have any good suggestions. If it's had enough time to dry
thoroughly, my guess is that there's no easy solution outside of heading
to a repair shop.
2) If you're at all a little bit mechanically inclined, I would remove the
hard drive, and put it in an external USB/firewire enclosure (example:
http://www.bixnet.com/usb20fircome.html - not recommending specifically,
just an example). That way you can then take the disk to any other computer,
plug it in and copy the data off. It's what I would do in your shoes.
If the computer's unable to boot at all, that might be your only option.
And of course I'd recommend setting up regular backups in the future so
you don't lose data should another accident, "child-related" or not :-).
Thanks for asking,
Leo
Article 11283
| Category:
Hardware
