There are few things as alarming as having your hard drive systems suffer fire damage and needing fire damage data recovery . The heat and smoke combine to damage the hard drives along with other systems in your computer which create a devastating effect. If you had to put the fire out with water, the damage may be even more severe.
However, there is still hope that you can recover some, if not all the information from your computer even with fire damage. So, you will need to follow a few steps of what to do and just as importantly, what not to do to get the data retrieved.
Put Out the Fire Before You do Fire Damage Data Recovery
You’ll want to make sure that the fire is totally out before taking the next step. This means conducting a cursory inspection to ensure that the fire is extinguished. Even the smoldering remains may cause the fire to reignite, so you will need to make sure that it is totally out. The last thing you want is the fire to restart, damaging more of your hard drive or worse, setting the surrounding materials on fire as well.
Cease Operating the Hard Drive
Do not turn on the hard drive if it has been damaged by fire. Too many people will try to turn it on or keep operating the drive which may cause even further damage. You may very well destroy the rest of the drive in the process, so keep it shut down.
Do Not Dry Out the Hard Drive
While this may sound counterintuitive, you will want to keep the hard drive wet if you used water to put out the fire. You should not use water in extinguishing an electrical fire, but sometimes people react instinctively and pour water without thinking. If that is the case, do not make attempts to dry out the hard drive.
Avoid Cleaning the Hard Drive
It will be tempting to clean or remove the damage caused by the fire. However, given just how sensitive a hard drive can be, you should not try to clean the damage away. This means avoiding shaking or opening the hard drive. You’ll want to keep the movement to a minimum so that the hard drive will stay as sound as possible.
Call a Professional Company
Because fire and water damage your hard drive in a way that is unique, you will need to call the best data recovery company for any fire damage data recovery case to get back your data. Consumer software recovery systems are not equipped to handle this type of damage and may only make things worse if you are trying to pull the information from the fire-damaged computer.
So, you should call the professionals who have experience in such matters as they have the knowledge, experience, and equipment to do the work right. It may be that your hard drives are too damaged and the information inside destroyed, but you will not know for sure unless you take your computer to a professional data recovery company.
