What happens if HPX172 takes a bath?
 

This is a theoretical question right now - I just hope it will never happen. But, same as life, we never know.

Suppose my HPX172 takes a dip into the sea (Or the river, or a swimming pool - you get the idea)? Camera is gone. I understand that. But, can the P2 card contents be rescued? Does anybody knows how waterproof is the P2 card? Is there such a company that will do data recovery on a P2 card? I know there are companies doing this recovery on Hard-Disks - but, I haven't heard of one that offers recovery services on P2.

I can't speak directly for P2, but there are many stories of Compact Flash and SD cards going into the washing machine and the data still being recoverable, and even the card still working fine in other respects afterwards. It's possible that they may actually have an advantage over a P2 card in being an encapsulated unit, a P2 card being (AFAIK) more complicated - a collection of circuitry within an outer case. I'm sure it's weather proof - whether it would survive deep immersion is another matter. (Has anyone taken one apart? And salt water is likely to have a worse effect than fresh water even on contacts etc, even if the main bits of the card are OK.

Another factor which may influence survivability is whether the camera was switched off, or on and recording. If the latter, who knows what may happen electrically as it hits the water?

As long as you don't overwrite data it's fascinating how much can be retrieved, regardless of water or fire damage. Of course it comes at a cost employing data reconstructing companies, but if the pictures are once in a lifetime it might be worth paying a lot of money...

DriveSavers Data Recovery - DriveSavers Announces Data Recovery Services For P2 Cards

And i suspect KROLL Ontrack can be of service to, allthough this was hard drives...still data saved.
Shuttle Columbia's hard drive data recovered from crash site

Electronics are surprising durable if they get wet, as long as they don't have electricity flowing when wet. A bunch of silicon wafers aren't going to melt. Salt water is a bird of a different feather. Hypothetically if i dropped something in the water, I would rinse it in water multiple times and try to keep it in water until I got somewhere I could submerge it completely in denatured alcohol and try to blow it out and give it a couple of days to dry out in the sun or under a lamp. That's just me though.

Fresh water is not a big deal- power down the item asap and let it set for a couple of days to thoroughly dry out. Often it will restart. Salt water is death though. If it gets wet in salt water it will need a fresh water rinse asap. And then prayer.

Noah

from experience
 

I unfortunately can speak from experience. Sick one day after a shoot in africa I crashed down on my bed and went to sleep. Two hours later I awoke to find my camera which I put next to me was now in a puddle of water 2 inched deep. A water bottle had tipped over and it top was not 100% tight. I picked up the camera and water flowed from every button. My cards we ok. I took the battery off and set it out in the hot Serengeti sun and 3 hours later I tested it. To my surprise it worked. 2 years later it is still going strong.

I would agree with the salt water, rinse it out in a bucket of clean fresh water (maybe even bottled water) set it in the sun for a couple of days opened up and prey.

Having been a canon guy with the xl1s and G2, they were constantly in the shop getting fixed. Everything went on them. DSLR too, all canon camera would just stop. I have two hvx200's and not a single problem. I switched to Nikon for DSLR. Again much more rugged.

Just make sure that if you have P2 cards and the salt water has gotten them wet as well, rinse the contacts,other wise they will go south. I do have a customer that gave his HVX200 a salt water dip, washed it immediately in fresh water, and it took a couple of weeks before it opened its eyes to the world, but it worked. The P2 cards he forgot and they were never revived.

Best,

Jan