Found it at the end of the dryer cycle (with steam...) Plugged it in without any wait time and it worked just fine. Then I watched this which shows that this is the expected outcome Still glad I have a backup.
Yikes. I washed and dried my Apricorn 2.0 drive, but no steam. Worked like a champ but like you, really glad I have backups. Not to mention that the darned thing was over $100...
Ordinary thumb drive? Generally I would suspect that the majority of them would survive at least a wash if not a dry. Even if it got wet, as long as it dried out completely you should be able to get in and pull anything off of it in the short term before things corroded. The Ironkey and Apricorn are supposed to be dust and water resistant to some degree (don't have the specs in front of me right now) but it's nice to see anything actually hold up to a little accidental abuse.
From Ironkey: IronKeys have been designed to be waterproof to military standards, ensuring that your data is protected not only from unauthorized users but also from the elements. The IronKey is laboratory certified to be waterproof to MIL-STD-810F. MIL-STD-810 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The only real issue would be, corrosion on the USB Contacts, and a Static Discharge in the Dryer, if you didn't add a Dryer Sheet....
Interesting, I still wonder how long their integrity will hold. All media goes bad eventually. But If I could get 5 yrs out of and IronKey it would be worth the price
Secure storage is a fetish of mine. I usually run a computer until they die and then try to get the backups to work with the new system, yes I know, I have to go to Linux, but the wife doesn't like it yet. I have never tested IRONKEY or such, by accident or on purpose, but I think it is well worth the cost to have data on good storage in a cage and I am playing with raspberry pi and hope soon to put the data storage and the computer in the cage. Have had problems with format changes over the last 30 years and a lot of the old media may well be ok, but I have nothing to read them with. Thats why I want the raspberry pi and Linux.
