Fire and Water Damaged Drive Recovery

Drives that have been through a fire or flood can often still be recovered, even when the computer around them is ruined. Since the January 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, many Los Angeles families and businesses have been left with drives pulled from damaged buildings. How a drive is handled afterwards makes the difference.

Water and flood damage

• Don’t turn it on, and don’t dry it with heat or rice
• Keep a wet drive damp: seal it in a zip-lock bag so corrosion doesn’t start as it dries
• Send it to us as soon as you can

Fire, heat and smoke

• Don’t power on anything that was in the fire or heavily smoked
• Leave melted cases closed: we remove drives carefully in the lab
• Soot on the platters is cleaned in the cleanroom before any reading

What we recover from

Desktop and laptop drives, external drives, NAS units, servers, memory cards and phones’ SD cards. Solid-state storage can survive heat surprisingly well when the memory chips themselves are intact.

How it works

Book online or call, and we collect the drive or you ship it to us. An engineer evaluates it, tells you what can be recovered and gives you a fixed quote. Recovery only starts when you approve it, and we work from a copy of the drive, never your only original.

Questions we get asked

Is it worth trying if the computer is badly burnt?

Often, yes. Hard drive platters are sealed in metal and can survive temperatures that destroy the case. We tell you honestly after the evaluation.

Can insurance pay for data recovery?

Many policies cover it. We provide an itemised invoice and a report of what was recovered for your claim.