Hard Disk Video Camera Dropped In Sea

[WSB]

Do you have the make and model?

Sony Handycam DCR-SR70E

 

[Winglet]

The salt water will have probably caused short circuits which could have fried the main board.
There is a possibility the hard drive will still work however it will entirely depend on how much water got in and what state it is in.
You could take it to pieces and take the drive out however unless it is a SATA connection which you could hook up to a PC via a SATA to USB cable, you may be screwed as it is often hooked up with a flat cable straight into the drive which would make things more difficult.

 

[WSB]

The salt water will have probably caused short circuits which could have fried the main board.
There is a possibility the hard drive will still work however it will entirely depend on how much water got in and what state it is in.
You could take it to pieces and take the drive out however unless it is a SATA connection which you could hook up to a PC via a SATA to USB cable, you may be screwed as it is often hooked up with a flat cable straight into the drive which would make things more difficult.

Thanks. I'll give it a week to dry out in the airing cupboard then see if a miracle occurs when I power. Most likely not.
Then I'll try as you say.

 

[RandomGrinch]

Sony Handycam DCR-SR70E

Lovely little cameras at the time, I used one extensively at work.
Apparently they use drives with a ZIF (zero insertion force) connector:

ZIF to SATA, or USB adapters are available.

 

[WSB]

Lovely little cameras at the time, I used one extensively at work.
Apparently they use drives with a ZIF (zero insertion force) connector:

ZIF to SATA, or USB adapters are available.

Excellent, thank you.
Was a great little camcorder but tend to use the video feature on my DSLR these days as high definition

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I used to often clean pcb's by simply rinsing them in a good flow of hot water. I would then blow the worst of the moisture out, with an air line. I would then follow that with an hair dryer, or in winter, leaving them on a hot radiator for a few hours. The quicker they were washed and dried, it seemed the better.

 

[opps]

Its already been soaked in salt water several days ago, I would suggest any damage has already been done. As a sailor (there is a clue in my user name) anything that gets dropped into salt water needs rinsing in fresh. By all means take it to someone who can repair or try to recover the data but I am offering genuine diy advice.

Take it or leave it, no skin off my nose

At mate of mine used to do IT forensics for the Met. He once told me that if you drop a hard drive in a bucket of salty water it will leave the data un-retrievable. Not even the US military would be able to ghost the image.