spilled chocolate milk on my seagate external hard drive. what to do?

[jetlagged]

I have a macbook air 2012 13", and I have a seagate backup slim external hard drive which was connected to the usb port. I spilled chocolate milk on my external harddrive. the hard drive wasn't completely soaked all the way through, mainly just the outer shell of the hard drive or at least that's what i saw, the liquid could have seeped in for all i know. i dried it off quickly. there was also a small amount of splash on the mba keyboard, again it looks like it was just on the outside.

i'm kinda panicking right now. i have like all my pictures within the last 5 years in that hard drive, precious memories. it's one of those small external harddrive powered by the computer through the usb 3.0 cable. i quickly unplugged the hard drive, and dumped it into a huge container of rice (thank goodness for being asian, easy access to a bag of rice lol)

Anyways I ordered another external hard drive and will check in 2 days to see if that old hard drive still works. if it does, I'll transfer everything to the new one. how long should i leave it in the rice before plugging it in again to see if it works?

is there anything else I should do? what happens if the hard drive doesnt work anymore? is there a way to salvage the files and pictures? i had an iphone 5 before completely soaked in water and it never worked again. they said theres no way to get all those pictures back.

 

[0388631]

External drives are just a hard drive inside an enclosure with a small board allowing it to be connected with an external interface. I doubt anything happened, but keep it in the rice for now.

 

[jetlagged]

Thanks, I just tested the external hd, still works. Had me nervous. I'll copy and transfer the files to my new external hard drive today.

 

[CoastalOR]

i'm kinda panicking right now. i have like all my pictures within the last 5 years in that hard drive, precious memories. it's one of those small external harddrive powered by the computer through the usb 3.0 cable.
Anyways I ordered another external hard drive and will check in 2 days to see if that old hard drive still works. if it does, I'll transfer everything to the new one.
is there anything else I should do?

I would recommend getting a 2nd external drive to backup your external drive with your precious pictures. Hard drives can and do fail so it is best not rely on only one copy of your pictures.