Washed and dried my memory cards

[dutchpickle]

I had 2 memory cards in my jean pocket as a backup in case somehow I lost my computer on a flight back to the US. Tired, I threw the jeans in with my other clothes and washed them on hot. Then dried them for 45 minutes on hot. Bummer, because I just got a virus in my laptop and thought maybe those pics there were lost.

The cards seemed to be dry so I put them in my camera and they looked ok. My computer was jammed up so we had to do a little work on it. We got it fixed and hooked up the camera to view the pics on a larger screen. They looked ok. Those cards seem to be able to take a lot of abuse.

I wonder if a digital camera floods, will the card will hold the pics in its memory or will they be lost?

 

[TravisD]

Memory cards are pretty resilient - no moving parts, so your main enemy is corrosion. A freshwater bath (the washer) isn't normally a problem. Flooding with salt water though means you better get them into clean fresh water and get the salt rinsed away ASAP before it starts eroding any of the circuitry.

As to what happens if it floods while in-use -- it'd probably depend. Like any digital medium, it's possible to corrupt the filesystem if you lose power during a write operation, but the probable outcome is that you'd just lose the picture that's being written. Once the card has no power applied it's pretty stable though.

Most electronics actually are -- it's not uncommon to "fix" a (coffee/soda) 'flooded' PC keyboard by running the keyboard (only) thru the dishwasher. The hot water is good at getting the sticky stuff out. Just don't run the heated dry cycle since the case might not like it that much.

 

[herman]

Just to add to Travis, it's one of the big misconceptions out there, water, esp fresh water, does not hurt electronics. What does ruin them is having power applied while they are wet. It's the corrosion caused by electrolysis and short circuits that cause the damage, not the water itself. Most of the time if you get the power off quickly (remove the batteries), wash the item in warm clean water and DRY IT COMPLETELY, the equipment will work fine.