It is recommended to leave recovery of your computer equipment to professionals. There are companies throughout the country that offer that service, but if you want to try it yourself, below are steps to follow.

Unplug all equipment from electrical outlets (i.e., either remove ALL plugs from the surge suppressor(s), or disconnect the surge suppressor's plug from the wall/floor electrical outlet).

If you may need a data recovery for your water-damaged computer media (you don’t have backups), be sure to minimize further damage to the media. Here are some tips:

• Leave the computer turned off. Do not turn the system on or boot up.

• Turning on a damaged system usually will cause further damage, making a data recovery attempt more difficult and sometimes impossible.

• Remove the media from the system--such as a hard disk drive from a computer--and immediately place it in an air-tight plastic bag, such as a Ziploc® brand bag. Do not leave the media out in the air to dry. Do not dry the media using a hair dryer or other blower. Do not open the media.

• Allowing the hard drive or other media to dry out may cause additional damage, which may make the recovery more difficult, if not impossible.

• Act quickly to send the media to a vendor offering professional data recovery services.

• For water-damaged media, swift action may make a difference.

Drain freestanding water by tilting equipment (e.g., CPU cases, printers) or diskette(s) at an angle that allows water to flow freely from the unit until the unit is dry.

Optional: Disassemble equipment into the smallest components possible.

Let all components air dry under a constant air flow (e.g., oscillating fans; open windows with strong cross ventilation); make sure that all components are resting on an absorbent surface (e.g., multiple layers of paper towels, lint free fabric toweling, etc.) - change the absorbent material as often as needed. Gently rotate hardware components (in all planes) from time to time.

Make sure that all diskettes are dried in as horizontal a position as possible.

Once equipment components are dry, carefully reassemble them.

Plug external modems, printers, or externally powered monitors into a surge protector and turn them on – (all that is being ascertained is whether the power light comes on for that piece of equipment.) If the power light does not come on, continue to dry the item and try again; if there is still no evidence of an active electrical connection, the item will have to be replaced. These procedures DOES NOT apply to computers (see paragraph below).

For computers, reassemble only the CPU case, motherboard and power supply. Test this assembly as describe in the paragraph above; if there is no evidence of an active electrical connection, continue to allow the components to dry and test again. If there is still no sign of power, replace the computer's power supply; should there still be no sign of an active electrical connection, the motherboard will have to be replaced.

**Note once an active electrical connection has been established, turn the equipment off, install the remaining pieces (one at a time, sequentially - monitor, RAM, floppy disk/hard disk controller, I/O, internal modem, other) and separately test each configuration. Then connect the diskette drives and test this configuration. Finally re connect the hard disk and test the final configuration.

Backup tapes that have water damage should NOT be inserted into a tape backup unit even if you think the tapes have been dried out. Water can still be present between the layers of tapes. They should be sent to a company specializing in this type of recovery.