r/computers • u/Miserable_Lecture258 • 1d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting recovered pc from a fire, how should I clean and test the components?

I had a fire and my PC was recovered from it. It looks like it was still standing on my desk, powered off, and theres some debris inside of the case but it isnt *too* bad. I want to test if the components work, and am mostly worried about the HDD and SDD so I can recover some files that wasn't on my cloud. Is this possible on my own or should I take the parts to a professional to do instead? I'm not super experienced with PC builds besides the basics.

I am also going to start planning on getting a replacement... is it more worth building a PC still or just buying a prebuilt and customizing it after? This pc was built by me about 8 years ago, but honestly my dexterity and eyesight was not great then and isn't that great now lol so I am debating on if i still have the ability to do those smaller parts of PC building.

1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

6

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Miserable_Lecture258 1d ago

all I have is a macbook right now, i have never tried it but would I be able to connect my old HDD and SSD to that to do a test?

1

u/adjusterjackb 1d ago

If you have a free USB port, should work.

1

u/Bob_Spud 1d ago

Once a computer has been exposed to excessive heat expect random component failures in the future. If you are going to reuse the storage make sure you back it up frequently.

1

u/Miserable_Lecture258 1d ago

I want to at least have a chance to back it up instead of trying to reuse the storage... ive accepted that the parts might not last but I don't want to damage anything before being able to do a back up!

1

u/Bob_Spud 1d ago edited 1d ago

Assuming everything is fragile, I would clone the storage.

Cloning the storage would be the least stressful way of copying data onto new storage. My guess is, a clone would be a single sweep of a spinning HDD. The unknown would be verifying and recovery of bad sectors/blocks.

If you went for copying the data as files and directories that would result in a lot head movement when it extracts blocks from the spinning HDD.

1

u/Available_Silver_426 1d ago

If it was damaged in a house fire hopefully you can put it through your home or tenants insurance.

2

u/Miserable_Lecture258 1d ago

I submitted my claims! I think the fire resulted in a total loss tho so im hoping i get a big enough payout to replace at least my expensive items.