Can Hard drives pass airport x-rays

[Guest]

I'm thinking of bringing my computer back to my country. I was wondering If I could just dismantle everything and just bring them with me on the plane. Does the airport x-ray screw up any computer parts (hard drives, cmos, GPU)? Thanks for the help.

 

[Guest]

Sure, laptops do it all the time.
I've personally sent desktop hard drives through protected by nothing but a cardboard box.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.

 

[Mavicator]

I send mine through airport x-ray machines all over the world and I've never had a problem.

-- *Ding Ding* Knowledge for the clueless!!! --

 

[Guest]

I've noticed this confusion people have about X-rays and electronics. The only real (and originally the only) concern is passing camera film through an X-ray machine, because the X-rays will expose the film through the casing.

People seem to have somehow assumed that is was the camera that couldn't pass through X-rays and thus all electronics, or even anything magnetic-- or something like that.

X-rays will not affect your electronics or magnetics any more than passing them under a strong spotlight would.


<font color=purple><b><i>--Insert witty saying or aphorism here--</i></b></font color=purple>

 

[Kwonger]

Nothing wrong with them. Most machines may have big signs saying it's okay to put them in.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

sure no problems there.
just remember to pack it with lots of foam padding.
reduce the number and intensity of physical shocks it recieves.


"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you have created"~Darth Vader, Star wars

 

[dhlucke]

Hard drives are insanely durable.

My dad's company refused to upgrade his old computer, so he gave it to me to destroy. I had to somehow make the computer unusable without leaving any evidence.

I decided that the best way was to destroy the hard drive.

I left it in our deep freezer for a couple of days and then I took it to the library and tried to demagnitize it. I covered it in heavy duty magnets and let them sit for a couple of days. I literally pulled the harddrive straight out of the computer while it was accessing the drive.

I did everything but stick it in the microwave or take it to my local university to be EMP'd...

Didn't do a damn thing to it.

My dad finally sent the computer back to his corporate office insisting for a new one. They did it. If they hadn't we would have just kept sending it back.

<font color=red>Did you ever wonder WHY aliens only abduct idiots?</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

>I covered it in heavy duty magnets and let them sit for a
>couple of days.

You might have had better luck if you had run the drive while it was covered in magnets. I did an experiment a few years ago with a 3.5 floppy and some <i>very</i> powerful rare earth magnets (you needed a screwdriver to get them apart). I found that I could ussually lay the magnets right on the disk. But if I moved the magnet around on the disk case, it screwed it up every time, eventually to the point that it wouldn't format again.

Yes, I was <i>very</i> bored!

Another good way to screw up a hard drive is to shake/knock the case around while the drive is accessing. It will sometime crash the read/write heads into the platters, and that's all she wrote. One of our secretaries managed to knock her tower over a few months ago. Bye Bye hard drive.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.