Yesterday I spilled some juice (not even beer) on my laptop. It went dead. After some attempts of trying to bring it back to life I almost cried as I didn't back up the data partition. Being an impatient person, I went to a shop and bought a new laptop. When I got back home I got frustrated that I didn't try hard enough to try to fix the old one. I went back to a shop and bought a laptop hd. After replacing the hard drive the old laptop works fine. Now I have 2 laptops (which I don't need) and am furious with myself for not assessing the situation properly. I'm never going to act like that anymore. I've spent over 500 pounds on something that I don't need. Btw, the prices of laptops drastically went down over the last couple of years. I remember when I bought my first laptop (it got stolen) in 2005 I paid 600 pounds for something that is not even half as good as the one I bought yesterday . Another lesson is: beware orange juice can damage your stuff.

At least you didn't cry over spilled milk.

The virtues of beer. Beer may be less harmful (in this case as well) since it doesn't have too many preservatives, citirc content etc.

Regarding the hard disk, unless it was an external device, I am not sure why it would get spoiled just by spilling some juice. It seems to me that if you wait for some more time and get the disk mounted on another computer, it may well work.

End

Well, there's some white substance on the hard drive indicating that something bad happened to it. Anyway, I'll probably need to find some converters to connect this internal sata laptop drive to some other box through usb.

Whenever you spill any fluids on electronics always do the following:

1) IMMEDIATELY CUT THE POWER ! Remove all sources of power, without power nothing can short-circuit, and thus no damage can occur besides potential corrosion. But few fluids are corrosive enough to do damage.

2) Let it dry thoroughly. You may need to open it up to let it dry. If you do, obviously make sure you can put it back together, so don't take it apart completely, just enough to help it dry. Some suggest using hair dryers, but I don't recommend it, unless you can turn off the heat. Hair dryers can get so hot they can melt plastic.

3) After several days, after you are convinced it is dry, you can put it back together and power it back up. If it does not work, then try diagnosing which parts may be damaged and replace them. If you can't find out, take it to the shop and have them fix it.

Only after all these steps can you consider an electronic appliance as dead.