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So I spilled water on my WD Essential 1.5 TB hard drive. I think it is just the enclosure that is affected so I bought a Rocketfish hard drive enclosure.

Now when I connect it to the computer it installs drivers and everything but under my computer it shows two drives but I can't click them.

When I go to computer management a message pops up saying "you must initialize a disk before logical disk manager can access it".

Any suggestions?

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  • Suggestions? Yeah, stop spilling water on your hard drive! Seriously, the enclosure doesn't do much - why do you think the drive itself is not affected? Aug 31, 2011 at 22:08
  • ha yeah. And really just a hunch. It was only a small amount of water so figured it might have just done something to the enclosure and not made it to the hard drive.
    – Jordan
    Aug 31, 2011 at 22:11

3 Answers 3

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How long ago was the water spilled? Like Mark said, the enclosures don't offer much protection (unless they advertise themselves to be waterproof, etc) against stuff like this.

If the spill happened only in the last few days, don't reconnect it.

Leave the drive in a warm (but not hot) area with very good circulation (or put it in front of a fan (but not an air conditioner, that'll just get it wetter) for a few days to make sure it dries off completely.

Then run any one of the standard drive recovery tools we've recommended ad nauseum elsewhere on this site.

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Your best bet is to let the drive dry out completely before trying again. It's possible, depending on impurities in the water (I hope it wasn't soda or juice!), that some of the circuitry of the hard drive itself were damaged. In that case, you're likely to be out of luck.

Hope you can revive your drive!

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If the data is critical to you, the drive doesn't come up after giving it time to dry and you don't have a backup:

If you've killed the PCB (printed circuit board), it's possible, depending on the drive make, to replace the board with one from a matching donor drive or replacement part and recover the data that way. There are several sites that discuss the process including how to move the NVRAM. Depending on your soldering skills etc.. this can be a tricky process and in some cases may warrant shipping it to a professional.

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  • Many of the professional data recovery companies can provide this type of service. When there's a PCB problem, this can be a very good solution. Aug 31, 2011 at 23:10

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