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I'm a stack overflow user and I hope it's ok to ask this question here. I have the age old problem of having spilled beer on my laptop. Luckily there's not much that isn't backed up and i'm on a live linux cd right now so i know only my hdd got ruined.
I'm more of a googler than an asker but I'm fascinated that "copper oxidation", "blue fur" "blue fuzz" turns nothing up when searching.
Basically I gave the hdd 3 days to dry out. Then I took the silver coloured plate off and found the copper contacts had blue fuzz and black stains all over them. The laptop was left on after the spill and I know very well the fault is with me there.
All these stains came away with a bit of elbow grease and a lens cleaning cloth.
Ok. tl;dr here's the question. If the contacts were covered with blue fur and black stains, is all hope lost? I know there might be blown chips etc underneath but does this oxidation, in itself, mean there was short circuiting and an end to all info on the disk?
I'm getting nothing from the drive. There's no power going to it, in my bios under hdd it says "none"
Ouch, that sucks... may the best of luck be with you. – user541686 – 2011-05-02T02:02:28.390
yup, this is the right place to ask, even if my answer is chemistry more than computing ;p – Journeyman Geek – 2011-05-02T02:02:28.913
When you say you took the silver cover off, I hope you do not mean you exposed the platters. If the drive was just in a thin metal tray as part of it's mount mechanism and you just removed this, then no futher damage done. – music2myear – 2011-07-28T16:17:49.523
At an old job of mine, doing geeksquad-like it support, two guys brought in a laptop for warranty work. It had been wiped down pretty thoroughly, which raised my suspicions given it's problem: not working at all. Removing the keyboard in front of the customers, I found sticky residue that had a familiar odor. "Doctor Pepper?" I asked. Busted! The machine was a loss and they didn't have an accidental damage warranty that would cover such mistakes. – music2myear – 2011-07-28T16:20:17.743