Travel Technology - Traveling with an external hard drive

Hello,

I did a quick search on this topic, but didn't see any answers. I am traveling this holiday with my external hard drive, and I'm wondering if it'll be okay to have it in my checked luggage or not (the concern being the xray scans on it). I could put it in my carry-on, but thats just one more thing that I'll have to pull out separately when I going through screening. (Already pulling out my laptop, my wife's, and our digital camcorder).

Any advice, thoughts, experience is much appreciated.

Thanks!

- Brian

X-rays won't do anything to the hard drive. If it isn't packaged properly in checked luggage that could be an issue.

The TSA does not tell you to take out hard drives, just laptop computers and camcorders. I'd travel with it in my carry on to ensure it isn't "lost" or stolen, since afterall there must be important data on it for you to be taking it along with you.

I carry a Hyperdrive 80 in carryon. Never take it out, never a problem so far.

Excellent! @:-) Thanks for the help!

I always travel with a 40gig portable HD with built in card readers for storing photos. It stays in a pelican case in my carryon. If you value the info on it you should probably not put it in your checked bag.

I've been on roughly 20 flights with my WD 120 GB HD this year, and have not taken it out yet... or experienced any problems with it- it runs awesome.

I put some movies on it and watch them "in flight", versus my computer's HD, which can work quite slickly.

Also, it is much more secure having it in person, like others have stated, so good to go.

~beckoa

I fly with 2 laptops (work and personal) and 3 external hard drives in my briefcase.... I get the extra "bag check!" treatment occassionally, but not often.

It is physically impossible for X-rays to affect data recorded magnetically on a disk, whether external or internal. Since they use the same mechanisms, the damage issues are identical. If you'd put your laptop through the X-ray - what choice do we have, really? Don't want to check it - there's no reason to be more concerned about an external drive. Laptop cases do not provide significant shielding from anything.

It is theoretically possible for a belt drive motor that is badly in need of maintenance to emit enough electromagnetic radiation to harm one, but the chances of that are more remote than those of your plane being hit by not one, but two meteors.

My external hard drive has never been questioned by security, at least not visibly. Some of the discussions they have behind the screening monitors may have been about it, but they can discuss anything they want there as long as it doesn't make me miss a flight.