How to save your wet iPhone

iPhoneSalvation
Originally uploaded by buckyreed

My girlfriend completely drenched her iPhone when a Camelbak exploded in the same backpack as the phone. I tried to power it off, but the power button wouldn't respond. I immediately stuck it in a bowl of rice and set it out to dry for a few days. After two days I tried it and it worked well except that the power button wouldn't turn off the iPhone reliably. I believe I would have had complete success saving the iPhone if I had totally buried it in rice instead of letting the top part stick out.

Surprisingly the Apple Store was cool about returning it and gave her a new phone. The moisture indicator inside the headphone jack still showed a faint red line, but it was nowhere nearly as obvious as when the phone was first soaked. The rice definitely took out a lot of the moisture inside the phone!

I've done this successfully before with other phones, but the key is to take the battery out and to not turn it on for days while it sits in the rice.

Maxtor OneTouch Software Download

I recently migrated to a new Windows XP computer and wanted to set up my Maxtor OneTouch III on the new machine. When I went to look for the software CD I noticed that it was gone. No worries I'll just download it from Seagate... or so I thought.

I seems that Seagate is only providing easy access to downloads for its branded products or for the native Windows Vista backup. There is nothing listed for the older Maxtors running on XP machines. After much searching and thrashing about in Google I finally found the ftp site to download the original software that came with the various Maxtor external drives.

Below are the fruits of my labor. For each model there is an .EXE if you just want to run the installer or an .ISO if you want to burn it to a CD first.

Maxtor 5000
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/outgoing/stxsupp/maxtor/Personal_Storage/
5000

Maxtor OneTouch
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/outgoing/stxsupp/maxtor/Personal_Storage/
OneTouch

Maxtor OneTouch II
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/outgoing/stxsupp/maxtor/Personal_Storage/
OneTouch_II

Maxtor OneTouch III
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/outgoing/stxsupp/maxtor/Personal_Storage/
OneTouch_III/OneTouch_III_USB_Combo_&_Triple/
OneTouch_III_Combo_&_Triple/OneTouch_III_USB_Combo_MaxBack

Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/outgoing/stxsupp/maxtor/Personal_Storage/
OneTouch_III/OneTouch_III_Turbo_Edition/

Maxtor OneTouch SBE
ftp://ftp.seagate.com/outgoing/stxsupp/maxtor/Personal_Storage/
OneTouch_SBE

Maxtor OneTouch 4
Software is still available on Seagate's website. Click on the link above or Google "maxtor onetouch 4" to link to the latest software.