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So yeah, either the kid or the cats managed to dump water into my laptop.  I won't even go into how it happened, because it's really my fault when you consider the fact that the probable culprits are a one year old kid and two cats.  At any rate, I yanked the HDD out of the machine.  Luckily, it was one of those "easy in/out" HDDs.  Prior to taking that step, I tried to dry the damn laptop with a hair dryer and other various tools.  No dice.  Trying to boot it results in...well, nothing.  Even the hard drive won't spin up.  I am hoping that this means the laptop itself and not the hard drive is boned.

I really need the data on that drive.  If that data is not recovered, I am not 100% fucked, but I may as well be.  Yes, I should have been backing up the data.  No, I didn't do it...it was on my "to do" list.  My main concern is fifty hours of billable work that I need to recover.  Not recovering it fortunately means I get to do it again and re-bill the time.  Yes, that's nice for me.   Yes, the client is that cool.

At any rate, I think the hard drive is fine.  So wth should I do to recover it?  Can the geek squad types at Best Buy recover the data?  Should I just sell a kidney and get some crazy tech type to do it? 

Don't be a moron, those Best Buy people aren't competent enough to diagnose an unplugged computer, much less one with a real problem.  This is what you do.  Buy an external USB hard drive enclosure.  You can get one on the intertubes if you don't have someplace like CompUSA nearby to charge you twice what they're worth.  Follow that up by getting a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE cable adapter, you'll need to plug it between the 3.5" IDE cable in the enclosure and the 2.5" connector on your hard drive.  Stick the drive in the enclosure, plug the enclosure into the USB port on a working computer.  Voila, your drive pops up on the computer.  Proceed to copy your data out of it and remember to back it up next time.  The total cost should be around $50 for the parts.

[PROTIP: Some laptop hard drives have a funky connector plugged into the end of the drive to make it more foolproof to insert into the computer.  The connector on the drive should be an array of pins, if it looks like the long slot at the bottom of an NES cartridge, it has one of those connectors on.  Pull that off to get at the pins that you need to plug the IDE connector into.]

[Edit: Oh, and there are drive enclosures out there for 2.5" IDE drives, if you can find one of those it will save you the step of having to buy an adapter.]

If you have another laptop you can try it in there, just to see if it can spin up. Other options include getting a 2.5" drive external exclosure or getting a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter and trying it in a regular PC. If it can't spin up I doubt a place like Best Buy will be able to help you. If you absolutely have to get the data off you'll need to send to a place that'll take it apart and use special tools to read the data off the platter(s) which, presumably, costs a lot of money.

DO NOT GO TO GEEK SQUAD!!!

Holy shit that would be compounding one problem with another colossal fuckup!

Those guys seriously don't even know what a video card is - they may look like geeks but they ain't!

I saw geek squad installing a modem in a woman's computer and they didn't bother to blow out the ginormous dust bunny that was at least 3" wide. Lazy bastards.

Rule #1 of water spills: if it's not powered at the time, let it dry naturally and it'll be fine. Turn it on too soon and it's as good as dead.

Otherwise, what Trippy said ;)

What Trippy and Kitsune said.

So if drive had the funky connector at the end, it would basically have a few rows of extra pins compared to what is on the circuit board of the 2.5" enclosure that I bought?  I'm a bit hesitant to start taking the outer parts of the drive apart....I already had to remove the plastic drive holding dongle that the laptop was using to hold the drive in place, so now there's a loose cover plate that I'm trying to not lift if at all possible.

EDIT -- Aaaannnndddd never mind.  Apparently I just didn't seat the damn thing well enough the first time and the "extra pins" are the four extras for adding jumpers and stuff.

EDIT2 -- And thanks a hojillion for the save, guys.  I was about ready to shoot myself in the face last night.  This drive has all of my articles, my CV, all of my law office files, etc.  Some of it is backed up, but not about the last month's worth of data, and not my old class notes from law school (which are still crazy useful at times).  Now I'm just hoping that the laptop itself isn't boned, although I am guessing that it is.  We're waiting to see if it dries out, but I did try to boot the thing after opening the case and hitting it with a hair dryer for a while (before I posted here)...so I'm guessing that signs point to no.  But hey, if that's the case...new laptop!  And then I have an 80gb portable drive.  So that's nice.

So....were you able to have the data WISE FROM IT'S GWAVE?

Yep.  Now I'm just hoping that when I try to resurrect the damn laptop that it works...otherwise I need to scrounge up the dough for a new laptop before Feb. 26 -- the California bar examiners are making me type the exam because there wasn't enough space at the writing center (which amazes me, but whatever).

Your laptop's probably screwed if you tried to power it on before it had dried completely.  Depending on how much water was involved, generally you need to disassemble, blow-dry, then let them sit for at least twenty-four hours to be confident of safety.  One bead of water in the wrong place and BZZT.  Let the laptop sit for a couple of days, in the off chance that it isn't destroyed you'll want to give it as long as possible before you try to power it back up.  If it's been more than three or four days since the watering and it still won't work, time to put it up on eBay as spare parts.  A laptop screen in good shape is worth an easy hundred bucks, and both that and the optical drive and maybe the memory should be salvageable.

Well that bites.  The thing was on when it happened (the original spill) so I really don't hold out much hope.  But hey, new laptops are always nice!

Yeah just start looking for a new one now.  If you get it wet while the juice is on, it's fucked.  I posted a link to a refurb sale from IBM up in the Cheap Stuff section, or wherever you want to buy a usable office laptop.

Well, I may be getting one via barter.  My dad needs some legal work done and he normally respects my "I don't do legal work for my parents" rule, but since I need a new laptop, and he wants free lawyerin'....it's a pretty tough thing to pass up.  I generally don't do work for my family because a) it's nightmarishly annoying (you're still the kid/nephew/grandson) and b) it'd be really easy to get pissed off and do a shitty job because I'm more interested in defending the family and not doing things step by step.

I'll definitely take a look at your link though, if I can get something shipped here before the 26th, that's good enough for government work!

EDIT -- Oh well, looks like it's 99% sold out.  Thanks for the tip though. :)

There's always the local computer show.  Those are usually in the same place as the gun show.  If nothing else, you can pick up some DVD porn.

Surprisingly enough, pricing around for off the shelf stuff at places like Best Buy is revealing that a laptop significantly nicer than the one that broke is also crazy cheap.  Granted, my laptop had just turned 2 years old, and probably wasn't top of the line at the time, but it had an AMD 64 processor and a decent ATI graphics card.

If you have 30 minutes of free time, don't care about the laptop too much and some bad vodka, you might try re-spilling it on the laptop and letting it dry.

It turns out that there's a CompUSA going out of business up the road.  I figure that if they don't have shit left, maybe I can weasel my way into getting the Best Buy across the street to price match the item.   :evil:

We have a cheap stuff section?

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9180.0

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Download the demo from: http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm
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Try this utility hope you will succeed. I have some good experience with this utility.
Hope it will work for you as well.

Best of Luck.

Your local library should have Word and a laser printer ;)

(http://www.worldwide-web.com/JeffreyBabad/Simpsons/Moleman/moleman.gif)

Then again, I just moled the library system :P

Except that the CA bar examiners won't send a proctor to my local library.  ;) 

Is that a strict rule? Our library has an exam proctor (my girlfriend!) and a notary public.

My mother was going to go for notary public years ago, and the rulebook is hilariously outdated. Stuff like 'you shall not be seen on a public walk with characters of an unsavory nature'. I told her she wasn't allowed to walk with me anymore.

Heh, every rule that any state's bar examiners make is a strict rule.  You also have to use this special software that locks you out of everything but a gimped Word doc.  They're the gatekeepers to adding a second state to my current "find a job I don't hate" search.  Therefore, they win.

It's as if they don't trust lawyers or something.

I bet it's moreso about whining.  We used the same software at my law school.  Someone was dumb enough to announce that the school had failed to configure the software to turn off spell check (a feature it had for some reason).  The howling from the non-laptop users was insane. 

As long as it's the same as writing (but legible and faster) people don't bitch as much.