Question for Justin

Hi Justin,

I've got a couple of non-Asus questions that you could probably answer based on your experiences travelling. I'm going to be taking an external 3.5" aluminum hard drive and an Asus Z70V with me as carry-on when I relocate soon, and I'm wondering I should be at all worried about the X-Ray machine deleting my data either on the notebook drive or the external hard drive? Are there any other risky things I should be worried about, going through security?

Thanks,
Sandeep

 

Man.. that's a good question and here's my honest answer...

You shouldn't have to worry about a physical hard drive....... technically you don't even have to worry about digital flash memory (like in digital cameras) ...... but tell me this... after shooting a couple weeks worth of photos.... would you want to find out there's a problem?

Basically, what I do when I travel is obviously take my valuables as carry on...... I take my camera memory and my notebook and I let them hand check it (usually, for me it turns out to be great advertising as they want to turn the computer on and all that).... might not be the quickest, but if you're worried, better safe than sorry. If you have a good backup of what's on your computer, I wouldn't worry about it.... especailly if you're late and the lines are long... but if you have data on there that you can't replace, make them check it by hand....... You'll never forgive yourself if you lose an entire vacations worth of photos....... or worse.

 

I know I'm not Justin, but...I've gone through a bunch of airports (foreign and domestic) with both my laptop and digital camera(s). I've never had even the slightest problem because of it. I've never even been asked to power up my lappy, since I always just let it go through the machine...But make sure you carry all that stuff on though, since the checked baggage x-ray machines are a lot more powerful than the carry-on scanners.

 

See if you can get a hand check I wouldn't want a weeks worth of photos to get damaged from the x-ray machine. I have actually emailed images back home so I wouldn't have to worry.
Just a thought


Valsmere

 

I can also say that I have never had a problem with data loss from flash cards or hdds. Always take them as carry on and have always put'em thru the scaner to. Personally, a backup on cd or DVD is about as far as I go...I doubt Xrays could do much to a cd.
a

 

Yeah, I've also never had a problem. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that if there were problems, you'd hear a lot more about them. Millions of laptops go through metal detectors every day in airports across the world, and I' can't remember ever reading of a single problem. The only thing they warn you about nowadays is if you've shot film with an extremely high asa (1000) - and it's only a slight possibility then.

 

That's true too....... About 4 years ago when I first went digital, I had one serious highend camera that used to draw attention to itself...... digital film was very very new and I did hear of an issue not too long ago that either sd or something didn't have a lot of protection and just droppig it could lose whatever was on it......... and of course at the time, I wasn't about to let my very expensive sony memory sticks die by going through the xray machines.... let alone if they had pictures on them already.

I check have them hand check my digital wallet just like my regular wallet...... no big deal.