So that does assume (and tbc, I think it’s a fair assumption) that impact with water and such doesn’t damage seals and that the laptop was shallow enough that pressure didn’t over come seals.

For the sake of hypotheticals, let’s assume water “did intrude” on the drives.

On NVMEs, I think you’ve got the right of it. There’s really no where for water to intrude upon (at least that’s my understanding of their construction). I suppose I could see some damage if the connectors were soaked while power was connected, but that seems like a real stretch of the imagination.

For SSDs and HDDs though, if they’re cases got (muddy river) water in them, seems like they’d be fucked. Maybe an SSD would be fine with no power, but the HDD would need all its disks cleaned before being spun up again (an unrealistic proposition, though not impossible - seems like forensics would more likely scrap the disks once disassembled).

Mostly looking to test my own knowledge on modern drive construction, so I’d love your feedback on how right/wrong I am there.