Recovery

open the drives, remove actual hard-drive, let it dry, hook up to computer, get data.
If they were not powered, its probably still working just fine

Ok I took the Maxtor hard drive to a laptop repair shop the fellow behind the desk said he does not do this kind of repair but for no charge he will try see if he can open it up and get something back.... Sadly the drive would not respond and I have lost that data that was my youtube drive... My other external hard drive was still dripping wet so I have wrote that one of before I try. The small good news is my p.c internal hard drives seem ok I have hooked them up to my old p.c and they power up I have no idea how to use them but my work collegue says he can transfer the information off them onto any new p.c I buy which is good news, I dont loose all my childrens videos etc and my insurence are coming out monday to have a look at the damage so I can claim my three month old p.c off them...

Ok, this post isnt about data recovery, but rather an uninterruptible power supply for a PC setup. This seemed a like a viable home for the post, rather than starting a new thread.

So my APC died a few days ago, during the latest blackout. Frustrated, I upgraded to a better unit (APC XS-1300g) that offered 50 mins of reserve power for my setup. Then, on a whim, I developed a way to greatly boost the reserve capacity of my APC setups.

Protected Setup #1: PC+Monitor+Modem on APC-1300, plus assorted peripherals on surge only protection.
Protected Setup #2: TV+Cablebox on APC-550, plus DVD, VHS and PS3 on surge only protection. APC corp is sending me a free warrantee replacement XS-1300 for the XS-800 that failed, which will be a nice improvement.

My supplemental rig:
* 55 AH (amp hours) Superduty Sealed Marine Gel Battery, with carry handle.
* Portable 2-outlet 400w inverter

By itself, Setup #1 only has around 50 mins on the APC-1300, which houses a small 7 AH battery. HOWEVER, in the event of an extended blackout, I can hook the inverter to the marine battery, change the sensitivity on the APC from high to low, and then unplug the APC from the wall and plug it into the inverter. The APC then switches from discharge mode to recharge mode, and will run for at least 7-8 hours (probably longer) off the marine battery ... when that give out, the fully recharged APC will run for another 50 mins before going though auto-shutdown. The same rig can be used to run the TV for nearly the same amount of time.

It'd be nice if I could afford a $10k whole-house reserve generator fired by natural gas, but that's way out of my price range. The $200 gel battery (which I already owned and was collecting dust) and $30 inverter will have to do.

End of digression ...