cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16155441
rice absorbs moisture.
Curious if this works to recover notebooks or other electronics.
Rice is a terrible desiccant. Yes, it absorbs water when boiled
If you want to save your electronics after they've taken a bath, here's how to do so.
- Turn it off and disconnect from power ASAP. If you can, pull the battery.
- Dry as much standing water as possible
- Set a fan to blow on it for a day or two.
Airflow is the solution to drying something out, and rice blocks airflow.
My entire family's logic:
_Drop electronic devices in water
_Pick it up
_Swing it a few times
_Immediately and furiously try to turn it on to see if it's still work.
Assuming it is a paper notebook, the determining factor is how soaked the pages are. If it is too wet, they may start to meld together making the notebook unusable.
The best thing to do is to actually heat up the book. I've cooked mine in the oven at very low heat, which allows it to dry out fast. My dad does a variant of the rice method for wet books where he fills a bag with rice and then places it in the sun. However, if the notebook is too wet and the pages are sticking together, doing either of these will instead turn your notebook into a solid block of wood. Instead, your best course of action is to try and fan out the pages by individually peeling them apart, then putting the splayed-open notebook somewhere moderately warm where it can slowly dry out under your careful observation.
I’ve gotten coke on my nvme drive, after dunking it in distilled water couple of times and drying at 60 it worked 👌 the main thing which might fry anything is the case when voltage controls from battery/wall get bypassed. The chips in production are washed with deionized water on some steps, no problem. The structural damage comes from 7v+ voltages and prolonged exposure. (But something like data integrity can go to shits, that’s just chance. P.s. Obviously, you can’t heat up or wash battery).
I don't remember what I did afterward anymore, but I did once have a laptop get wet getting caught in a downpour in backpack that wasnt waterproof. It needed a new power supply.
I know of this one time (last year) a window that was purposely kept shut was opened by a visitor and the notebook was rained upon. completely soaked. Kept in rice for about a month (changing the rice on some schedule), it booted up fine for a while. then died completely after a few weeks.
