Smoke Damage

[Beermaster]

Hello everybody,

Just wonering if anyone has any idea if smoke damge to a computer will wreck it or is it salvageable?

Let me start from the begining, Sunday morning comming home from church to find the fire dept at our house, the Clothes dryer shorted out and burnt down the house roughly, it is a write off. Only 2 rooms where not damaged by the fire, that is My bedroom and the office where all the computers are, but these rooms are suffering from heavy smoke damage.

I just want to know if they are salvageable at all, there was 5 computers in the office, 3 of which where running at the time of the fire, my new one that was still in build mode and my old imac.

We are talking to the insurance company today, so i will find out more frm them as well, but just wanted to see if i can save my puters, i took the harddrives out already to ghost to new ones, hope to save all our pictures ect.....

[gingerbee]

if there covered then get new ones. ( I just say that because i pay extra for my computer insurance coverage )

[3.0charlie]

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Save the HDDs, but the rig innards may be covered in soot.

[SKYMTL]

I'd be more concerned over water damage caused when the fire fighters tried to put out the blaze.

[Sagath]

Jesus man! That is terribly unfortunate about your house. I'm glad to hear you and yours are okay

Regarding your PC's, if you give them a good cleaning I cant see why they wouldnt be okay.

I'm no expert tho, but I cant see smoke/ash being any worse then the wifes cat shedding all over my HAF.



Good luck!

[Beermaster]

Yea we are all okay, lost everything including our loved pets.

everything is covered in soot, the inards of the computers that where runing are BLACK wth soot, it really sucks. we feel just lost in the whole ordeal.

[PLg]

My dad's restaurant burned down in January, Both computers were pretty dusty and and covert with a black residue. They weren't running so it might have help a little but the inside was pretty smoky. 7 months later they are running just fine with a basic clean up. Please note that they are only use as workstations for accounting and stuff. There is no gaming or overclocking whatsoever.
buttom line. I would extremely surprise if the hdd would have fail due to heat or smoke domage.
Just to be sure pull out the hdd of the computer and bring it to a friend's house and make a back up of your personnal data. Since they were running the only thing I'm concern is the domage inside the psu with all the smoke and stuff.

[gingerbee]

like skymtl said all that water, i love pulling fuzz out of the front of my haf don't you ha ha.
most ash will combust too ( after when you think you got it all a cap blows because of ash under it)

[gingerbee]

really sorry to hear about your pets man that sucks ( i stand by what i said if you pay insurance for them then get new ones )

[MpG]

It's possible that the soot has conductive elements in it, which could short out the computer once you power it on. So I'm not sure that I'd get my hopes up. For the HDD's, make sure you clean around the jumper pins, just in case, before trying to hook them up to another computer.