HYPOTHETICAL ADVICE THREAD

[navkat]

Hypothetically, if someone was say, an EMT or something and say, this person were to back up a bunch of important digital copies of stuff from her old computer onto a jump drive, and let's say th old computer might've like, died or whatever, right?

So hypothetically, let's say, one day, before this person transferred the stuff onto the NEW COMPUTER, this person was really really tired and decided to do a load of laundry and go to bed. And SUPPOSE she woke up the next day and found a jump drive in the washer that says "EMS Docs" on it? What sort of advice would you have for a chucklehead like this? I mean, would there be a way for this clown to salvage the drive? Would it be okay in like a few days drying out in a bowl of rice?

Just curious.

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I have washed a jump drive as well and found all of my files completely intact.

But, I'm pretty sure letting it thoroughly dry out helped with that. I didn't put it in a bowl of rice though, I just let it sit for a week.

I think you've got a pretty good shot at it being okay. I've heard a number of classmates marvel about their jump drives surviving the washer.

[navkat]

HOPE!

That's what I wanted to know. Hope and how long until it's okay to check.

[Disco Pickle]

I've actually had one get soaked in liquid detergent.  I pulled it apart, washed off all of the soap with distilled water and let it sit and dry for a day or two.  Plugged it back in and it worked fine.

The key is to make sure it's completely dry before you apply power to it again. 

[Cain]

Put it in the microwave for 5 minutes, it'll be fine.

[navkat]

jerk.

[AFK]

Was the washer on the gentle or regular cycle?

[navkat]

Regular. I usually use 2/3rds the recommended amount of detergent or less--all I'm trying to do is change the surface tension of the water, not saturate the ground with phospahates, right? I do add a smidge of Borax though.

[AFK]

OFUK!  See, you were probably okay right up until you added the Borax! 

Just kiddin, I have no idea.  You'd think they'd make those little fuckers somewhat resilient.  Now if that had been a floppy disk, youda been toast fer sure.   

[Luna]

The rice (uncooked!) will help draw out the moisture.  Know somebody who rescued a cell phone that'd dropped into a toilet with that one.  Let it dry out, it may be just fine.

[Triple Zero]

Indeed, I heard good things about using rice in such circumstances.

And indeed, there's a good chance the data is just fine as soon as it's completely dry.

wikipedia says:

Compared to hard drives, flash drives use little power, have no fragile moving parts, and for most capacities are small and light. Data stored on flash drives is impervious to mechanical shock, magnetic fields, scratches and dust. These properties make them suitable for transporting data from place to place and keeping the data readily at hand.

(...)

Specially manufactured flash drives are available that have a tough rubber or metal casing designed to be waterproof and virtually "unbreakable". These flash drives retain their memory after being submerged in water, and even through a machine wash. Leaving such a flash drive out to dry completely before allowing current to run through it has been known to result in a working drive with no future problems. Channel Five's Gadget Show cooked one of these flash drives with propane, froze it with dry ice, submerged it in various acidic liquids, ran over it with a jeep and fired it against a wall with a mortar. A company specializing in recovering lost data from computer drives managed to recover all the data on the drive.[46] All data on the other removable storage devices tested, using optical or magnetic technologies, were destroyed.

But that last example is a "special" USB stick. The point is that this is mostly done by encasing it in something sturdy and waterproof.

So if it's dry, it should work. Especially if it was inside a pocket or something and therefore didn't get bumped around too much.

(also big no on the microwaving, of course)


FOR NEXT TIME USE AN SD CARD:

I probably told this story before on PD but you might not have heard it: In my experience, SD cards (the kind that go into a digital camera) are extremely resilient. I had a fire a few years ago and my housemate's room was a blackened cube with a foot of black chunky bits of what was once furniture. Below the ashes we found his camera, which was soaked and broken (though had not melted for some reason--unlike the glass icicles in the window frames). Inside it was a 2GB SD card, which worked just fine. I have also heard that you can drive a car over an SD card and it still works.

As far as I'm aware the memory in an SD card is made of the same stuff as a USB stick (Flash memory, NAND gates), it's probably the fact that SD cards are smaller and flat (very hard to break) and don't have space inside them where water can leak in that makes them slightly more resilient than USB sticks.

You should be able to get a small USB card reader key for under $5. Not in an electronics store of course but one of those cheap "we have all sorts of ugly cheap shit" places. I got mine for EUR 1.50 in the WIBRA, an ugly-clothes-and-random-cheap-shit store that bears a lot of similarity to the K-Mart I saw in the USA last year. So maybe try that. The card reader key is of course more fragile, but very replaceable. Also most laptops simply have a slot for SD cards, even better.

[navkat]

The rice (uncooked!) will help draw out the moisture.  Know somebody who rescued a cell phone that'd dropped into a toilet with that one.  Let it dry out, it may be just fine.

Uncooked? I just shoved it into yesterday's chinese takeout carton.

[Luna]

The rice (uncooked!) will help draw out the moisture.  Know somebody who rescued a cell phone that'd dropped into a toilet with that one.  Let it dry out, it may be just fine.

Uncooked? I just shoved it into yesterday's chinese takeout carton.

I have spent all week dealing with my idiot trainee, who has to have EVERYTHING spelled out.  Not small words, spelled out in individual letters... then she walks away halfway through the second word.  I may overexplain for the next couple weeks until I'm the hell OUT of that place and I recover.

[Thurnez Isa]

My advice to hypothetical questions is always "Just lick it."

[Reginald Ret]

The rice (uncooked!) will help draw out the moisture.  Know somebody who rescued a cell phone that'd dropped into a toilet with that one.  Let it dry out, it may be just fine.

Uncooked? I just shoved it into yesterday's chinese takeout carton.

I have spent all week dealing with my idiot trainee, who has to have EVERYTHING spelled out.  Not small words, spelled out in individual letters... then she walks away halfway through the second word.  I may overexplain for the next couple weeks until I'm the hell OUT of that place and I recover.

I get into that habit too, about 60-80% of my colleagues need to be treated like that. And one colleague got pretty close to punching me in the face and/or quitting because of that. He really didn't likebeing treated like an idiot. After one week of observing me and seeing the kind of questions i get asked and the things i have to explain to people he understands why i act like this.