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Jump drive, thumb drive, external data storage device, whatever you call it...
I just ran mine through the washing machine! I left it in my pants pocket by mistake. When I got it out, there was water inside it, but I shook most of it out.
I tried it and it seems to be working, but once it dries out and possibly corrodes inside, will it continue to work???
I think now while it is working I'm gonna copy everything off of it onto the computer itself or a CD...
Has anyone ever done anything so stupid as this!
Yes, 3 times infact, and it still works perfectly, but still, i'm probably just lucky, definately copy everythign off it, it's not worth risking it.
(thats not the onyl thing either, i've put the tv remote, a camcorder remote, 2 gameboys, a wii, my mates mobile, my digital camera, mp3 player, psp, £50 in notes, a dinner card and a tesco club card in the washing machine, and all except the wii work fine..)
Ok I won't ask how you accidently did this, especially something as large as a WII.
As far as the jump drive, i'd suggest several things.
1. Make sure the device is completely dry, then try to
use it.
2. When you back up files back up to more than one medium.
(i.e. put the backup on three different jump drives, maybe
a USB hard drive or two, etc.) Never only backup to
one source. Drives can and do fail so do multiple backups
to multiple media sources. That way if one drive fails
you have others to fall back on.
Oh and it's a real good idea to have some of the backups
off premises. (i.e. if you're house/office burns down
do you have access to backups that were not burnt to
a crisp in the fire? So maybe you backup to an on line
backup site or to a server you've got on your website.
It should be alright, my friend has put his PS2 memory card through the washing machine about 7 times, and that still works perfectly. :P
Electronic things are not usually affected by water unless they are turned on at the time, in which case don't expect them to work again. I'm not sure about LCDs, though. Corrosion shouldn't be a problem unless they have water in them for some time.
Some friends recently left a TV out in the rain. They were moving house and it somehow got left in our drive for a while. It rained and the TV filled up with water inside. It was in a plastic box that was left with the lid off, which meant that not only did no one notice that there was a TV in there, but the box filled with water that ran into the TV through the vents.
After I tipped the water out and left it to dry out for a while it worked fine, even though there had been water inside it. In the meantime they bought a new one, and were surprised that the old one still worked. So now they have two TVs. OTOH, if it had been turned on with water in it, then it might have been a different story.
It still might have problems with corrosion, but it had water in it for longer than would happen in a washing machine. Now I am trying to imagine someone accidentally washing a TV in a washing machine! Maybe if it was pocket sized?
BTW, TVs have high voltages inside. Turning on a waterlogged TV could be highly dangerous.
If its anything like a cell phone, it should be OK. Try putting a box fan on the floor pointing up and set the device on top of it to blow dry for a day or so.
If you've ever taken one apart, you'll know that there isn't a lot of metal inside. There are some jump drives that you could drive your can over and they would still work. All flash drives are extremely sensitive to static shock, though.
What's ironic about that story is that she left the car there and got in her parent's car when they evacuated. Not a good idea, but she said she didn't expect the flooding. I guess the moral is to plan for the worst.
Well... as a matter of fact... yep. A couple of years ago I finished a call on my cell phone, put it on my bed, sorted clothes to do some laundry, accidentally picked up the phone with the clothes, and dumped everything in the washer! Duh! But I must admit... I had the cleanest phone I've ever seen! Didn't work but it was clean!
--Rick
Well as the flash drives have no moving parts (it's a printed circuit board) if it works when you try it it may work for quite a while. But I'm sure it's life span has been drasticly reduced so your right in copying everything and get a new one.
Compare this to a micro drive which as the name suggests is a very tiny disk drive and dropping it or washing it can do it in.
Kevin
I spilled some pop near my desktop computer, it worked fine about a month before rebooting before it went into the Operating system. Case in point I had to replace the motherboard, and the cpu. By some luck the RAM, and the Harddrives and the video card were not affected. I think I messed up the BIOS chip.
Back up everything, that drive will die before you know it.