Experiences with external usd back up drives?
 

Hi All,

I will be traveling to Frankfurt from LAX soon and will be taking my laptop with me with my METAL-encased external usb hard drive.

I am concerned with both the TSA and the germans thinking that it might be a bomb or something as it is about 2 lbs, sliver metal encased, and pretty big. (fyi, it's a mercury elite pro 250gb drive from other world computing)
picture here http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3D2%26hl%3Den

so my question is whether any one has gone through security without any problems....in the end I am worried that they will take it away from me because they just don't know what it is. i dunno what do you think??

thanks! :)

That shouldn't be a problem. I travel with equipment like that and except for a couple of all electronics out of the bag (ORD) incidents haven't had any issues.

I typically carry 2 laptops and 2 external HDDs with me and have never had a problem.

No problem bringing it
 

You should have zero problem traveling with it. However you might want to consider encrypting any PII or sensitive data on the drive otherwise borser officials (especially in the US) might do a fishing expedition on the drive or worse, make a cop of all the data on the drive.

Enjy your trip.

I agree with the above. Worst case scenario they remove it from your bag, ask you what it is, and x-ray it again on its own. Take 15-20 minutes tops.

The real concern is them copying it. Which might sound like a very odd thing for them to do but I've read TONS of stories about people who have had their laptops, phones, and hard disks cloned.

Heck, I once got stopped at border crossing (US) and they decided to look though my digital camera's photos, as if it might contain evidence of ... something... Then starts asking me personal questions about my personal pictures ("Where was this taken?" "Who is this?" "What is going on here?").

PS - To beat the question it was at ATL from an EU Delta flight.

As the others have said I have never had a problem with multiple computers or multiple external HDD in the US or TATL.

MisterNice