Data recovery from flood and water damaged computer systems
We have recovered data from computers that have been involved in;
- Floods and storms
- Dropped into water
- Had fluid spilled on laptops
- Sunken ships
- Memory cards and external hard disks accidentally put into washing machines.
- Memory card fished out of a toilet!
Examples of data recovery after a flood.
A recent case was where a local company’s employees went into work on a Monday, to find that they had a burst pipe that was spewing water directly onto one of their servers. They brought the drives to us for examination. Once the drives were analysed and cleaned, we found one to have totally failed. However, because this was a RAID 5 we managed to recover all the data without the delays of rebuilding the missing drive, and all at a reasonable price. The drives were from a VMWare server running several VMs. Total job time less than 24 hours.
Following the floods in Cardiff, we received a 5 drive RAID array that had been submerged in 5 feet of water for 3 days; after thoroughly cleaning all the drives, we were able to recover 100% of the data. As a result, being flooded does not always mean that your data is lost.
If you’ve spilled liquid on your laptop, and if it’s safe to do so, turn off the charger at the mains and remove the battery from the computer. If the power lead is wet, turn the mains power off. Do not remove the drive to clean it, we use specialist cleaning tools to do that. And most important of all, to avoid electric shock and battery fires, do not power on the laptop or drive.
Once you have powered off and removed the battery, please call us on 0800 072 3282 to speak with an engineer about your flood-damaged media. Furthermore, check your insurance policy, as you may be covered for this type of loss.