Can anyone explain this weird Disk Utility behavior?

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So, I spilled coffee on a 1TB g-tech hard drive. i immediate turned it off, having heard that that is the first thing to do when getting electronics wet.

i checked and it looked like, in the end, it didn't really get splashed. so i wiped up the little that was on it and plugged it back in.

it didn't mount. i went into disk utility. i tried to mount it and it said to run first aid. i did and it seemed stuck making boot divisions (i think i have that term right.) so i force quit disk utility.

i turned it on again and it told me it couldnt mount it, that i should save what i can and reformat. i then hit repair disk and it was repairing it. again it seemed stuck. i forget what term it was on. i hit stop repair and it stopped. no force quit. and then it was fine. it was mounted. it was working.

can someone explain this? also, let me know what not to do in the future. i feel like i dodged a bullet here. and, yes, i will now never put coffee near my hard drive....

im runnign mac os 10.6.8 and Disk Utility 11.5.2
 
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What's to explain? You spilled a liquid on the drive and it's toast. Probably the circuit board on it was damp and shorted out.
 
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i went into disk utility. i tried to mount it and it said to run first aid. i did and it seemed stuck making boot divisions (i think i have that term right.) so i force quit disk utility.

It sounds to me like the first thing you tried was to partition the drive -- but you got lucky and force-quit before it did any permanent damage.

"Repair" is what you should have done first.
 
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I hope you ejected the drive before turning it off thats also a good way to corrupt it.
 
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No - the drive works fine. that's what weird.

i turned it off before ejecting it, worried that the time it mgiht take to turn off Final Cut and eject would be too long. And i did hit Disc Repair the first time (and the second time as well). It just seemed to start working again after I hit stop repair on the second repair and its working fine now. i just dont understand what happened exactly....
 

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