MP3 player water damage

[rliu]

Hi a couple of days ago I dropped my near brand new Zen Vision M in the toilet, I was devastated and am wondering has anyone else ever dropped an electronic product in water but had it come back to life just through waiting for it to dry?

 

[howard_hopkinso]

I hope the toilet was empty, apart from the water of course lol.

Seriously though. It`s not unusual for an electronic device to recover, if it`s allowed to dry out properly.

Regards Howard

 

[rliu]

Worryingly though I've been switching it on to check if it's recovered and I can hear clicking noises, as if the hard disk is not spinning properly.

 

[Radwen]

Are you sure thats theres no water left inside the HD ? Try using an hairdryer to blow air on it (without the heat on) for a while. It might help.

As long as nothing got fried, it should work good. Two problems water can cause is frying your pcb by having water on it when you turn it on (so if it's all gone, there cannot be any problemes linking to this, unless your water is ultra high in acid and burnt your pcb ), or it could hinder or rust mecanical parts.
In this case it's most likely your HD that has either water in it (hairdryer might take it away) or something rusted in it. In this case you would have to open it an see if you can clean the rust off ..

 

[rliu]

I am worried that something did get fried, it was on when I dropped it! I should just give up hope now shouldn't I? Or hope Creative used some devilishly clever designs to protect the board, but I doubt that.

 

[kirock]

This is what you might as well have done to your Zen. :knock:
No electronic product (unless by design in a waterproof enclosure) will survive a power-on water submersion. I guess if the water was deionized to a few Megohms-cm it would, but tap water is usually at well less then 200,000 ohms-cm and more like 50,000 ohms-cm. This means 1 cm long length of water (any width) connecting any two live parts will behave as 50Kohms of resistance. When water is in contact with all the live parts all at once.. there's a lot of current flow. :dead:

 

[twite]

were did you buy it from? if it was me i would take it back to the store and say it was doa

 

[rliu]

Amazon and I could try Creative Labs themselves.

 

[drfingers]

this is interesting.. I bought the same player from amazon and I also am also dealing with water damage..