Gadgetory

the idea of electronics being waterproof isn't exactly new I mean most flagship phones whether you're talking your s7s or your iPhone sevens whatever the case may be they're designed to go bloop into the water yay look at that they survived it's amazing oK we've all seen this before but what if you could waterproof a computer hard drive impractical yes impossible let's find out Corsairs 570 X mid-tower case features 4 tempered glass panels check it out at the link in the video description so the first and most obvious problem we need to solve is the exposed PCB that you'll find on the bottom of pretty much any modern harddrive if you know a thing or two about water you'll know that while it starts non electrically conductive as soon as it starts to pick up any impurities or metal ions it quickly becomes conductive and will cause any electronic devices that are submerged in it for long enough to short out and/or be permanently damaged so I pick myself up a can of Mg chemicals conformal coating number 4 19 C 340 G it's die lean free toluene free low vo C if you're into that sort of thing but more importantly it protects against moisture dirt dust and apparently thermal shocks and insulates against high-voltage arcs shorts and static discharge so step one is we are going to treat our PCB with this stuff okay so let's get started you got any old hard drive you want and go to town right wrong so most hard drives today are actually full of good old-fashioned air and they've got these breather ports that allow them to stay at the same internal pressure as the atmosphere around them this is imperative for their functionality and this is actually the reason why even when you submerge them in a non conductive fluid like a mineral oil cooled computer we have a bill blog that you can check out here where we actually explained all of this they would still cease to work because through these breather ports the mineral oil or any other fluid would seep in and gunk up the internals of the hard drive but there's been a recent development in hard drive technology that leads me to believe that perhaps we could run a drive submerged in fluid this is a Seagate Barracuda pro it is a helium-filled drive now the point of helium-filled drives was more efficient operation since helium is less dense than air you're spinning the spindles around there's less resistance but it also means they had to seal the insides of the drags because if the helium got out then you would lose the benefit right so this is the drive that I will be using 99% isopropyl alcohol and blue don't worry kids this is definitely safe I've done this many times I'm a professional now let's make ourselves somewhere to spray because I think the spray booth is over in the other side I have to assume this stuff wouldn't be very good to inhale so don't breathe okay check this up so I sprayed the crap out of it like it is pretty pretty gooped on there and it's actually like built up around the outsides of these chips so what I'm hoping is we have achieved the water resistance that we need and done so without damaging the ability of this thing to make contact with the places it has to so this is where it gets really sketch well those are all definitely worn so we're going to reinstall this on the hard drive and test it outside before we try to put it in the water mm-hmm hmm so it's possible that the painting that I did on the PCB covered up these metal contacts for data and power so we're just going to give it the OL have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in repeatedly try and scrape those connectors clean that does seem to be making a difference I don't know if you can see that close up there but you can see the conformal coating is coming up I don't even think it's spinning up yeah this drive is definitely not powered up okay so it's a power issue it can work with that get out the OL scraper just go at it a bit more aggressively here I can't imagine just spraying conformal coating on it would have destroyed it found the problem there were three contact points under here that I didn't send the ones for power for the motor so of course it's not spinning up mmm let's go ahead and give that the old you know hard drive sanding technique yes okay there it is there's our 10 terabyte drive okay so it's time time for what time to figure out what data I can copy for a test I am basically going to take the drive and put it in order see what happens what the hell is this okay so it's some kind of land issue I will deal with that later in the meantime I've got a USB type-c Ethernet adapter here and I've started three transfers each of like 2.3 terabytes worth of data so you can see here we are transferring to the adventure drive from the network so this should take quite some time now this is where it gets real so I'm going to take this drive which is currently writing data and ever so carefully cautiously and not at all recklessly oh this pains me I'm actually in pain right now okay I am liquid cooling the hard drive okay I'm halfway in about 3/4 of the way in is it still transferring still going let's go get some more water okay so to absolutely prove that there's no smoke and mirrors that's not mineral oil here's a new jug look tap water tap water AF top it up still transferring but don't take the camera off me we're proving this as a continuous shot here we go okay tap water AF it goes the power connector and the drive is submerged it's still transferring no okay let's get the moisture I think the power shorted I think that's what happened here oh oh I don't know what effect alcohol has on the conformal coating umm did not think that through okay so it's been popping kind of in and out of being detected I think it's to do with the power connector but quite honestly see here if we try again now boom it's transferring it now it's gone I don't know what we were trying to prove anyway putting it in water because it has no real practical application so let's just go get some mineral oil so I found all the mineral oil from the mineral oil PC I sincerely hope and I'm not going to make a mess here but as you guys know I'm allergic to funnels so the chances seem pretty good here we go soup okay so here we go can it handle mineral oil I want to see a longer sustained transfer here kids that's what I want to see so you saw it here first folks liquid cooled hard drive hopefully my editors have found some way to turn what's happened in the last half an hour or so into some kind of coherent narrative and hopefully you guys enjoyed it if you aren't familiar with mass drop they're the community where users discuss products that they're interested in buying and then mass drop talks to the manufacturer and negotiates a bulk order at a discounted price and they're now featuring a drop for the high-five men are easy rho0 IEM they have nine millimeter dynamic drivers and they ship with two pairs of silicone ear tips and they're only about thirty five US dollars which is pretty sweet so check them out and other drops at the link in the video description down below thanks for watching this video if you disliked it you know what to do but if you liked it hit that like button get subscribed maybe even consider checking out our merch store where you can buy clothes shirts like this one or our link to Amazon where you can buy it stuff like what we featured in the video like I don't know maybe this 10 terabyte hard drive that apparently can run under not water but non conductive fluid now that you done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so check out our video oh excuse me our video on the desk PC that you see right here our part 3 the conclusion is up and ready for your viewing enjoyment