Well, that's one way to clean a drive.

[Gehanna]

Among the portable drives I own, one is a Memorex traveldrive. On this device I keep some important portable programs and files. To my horror, I found it, soaking wet, at the bottom of my washing machine.

I placed it on my bedroom dresser so that I could continue to stare at it while lying down on my bed. Why did I lie down on my bed? Because I had to elevate my legs. Why did I have to elevate my legs? Because I was in shock (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-shock/FA00056).

Amazingly, the traveldrive still functions. I lost nothing from it. Are all traveldrives that durable or have I been fortunate?

Sincerely,
Gehanna

[vixey]

:Jaw: and :roll:

[Fenika]

I dunno about jump drives, but I washed a set of headphones (the ear plug type) once and aside from later developing a slight crackle at high volumes, they were just fine.

[Williebee]

From my experience, you got lucky.

I've dealt with, I think, ten of these. I think maybe half of them experienced complete failure. In most cases, it was more than likely (my opinion) because the owner didn't give them time to dry out completely. In one case it was because the drain tried to suck it down and mangled it.

Glad to hear you've got your stuff.

Oh yeah, one of the one's that survived was mine. (Said Charlemagne in "Pippin" -- It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.)

[Ol' Fashioned Girl]

And you've already backed up said information on several new drives, yes?

[Clair Dickson]

Yeah-- I second what OFG said-- having just gone through a jump drive myself!

Back up back up back up back up. No single point of failure.

(I now have a folder on my computer. The first thing I do when I plug in my flash drive is copy everything into the folder. Then I can dillydally about moving things to their right homes and making sure I have the most updated version and blah blah blah. I also email important stuff to myself. Losing data sucks-- don't let it happen to you.)