WesternDigital My Passport Ultra on Airplane!

[pugnaq]

Hey everyone. I will travel to the United States in may for the first time, i'll be there for few days and then head to the Middle East. Since i'll be for a few months in the Middle East i wanted to take with me my external hard drive with everything in it. What concerns me is would the security at the airport take it from me or check everything in it? I have a lot of personal things such as, pictures, chat history, memos and stuff like that. What would be illegal inside of it? I have pictures of friends and don't know i'm kinda concerned. I'm so paranoic i want to get myself another external hard drive to back up my other external hard drive and leave it here just in case lmao

 

I will take it inside the box that came with it. Would look exactly like this: "see attached file"

 

Also i'm taking my Xbox One, PS4 and few pendrives and micro sd cards (like 10 in total)

[thekeemo]

I wouldn't worry about it

If they were to check your hard drive they would have to stop every single person passing by for hours.

I am a regular flyer and never had problems with carrying computer parts.

Only problem I had with my luggage is when I was younger and had a backpack full of metal toy cars.

[pugnaq]

Just now, thekeemo said:

I wouldnt worry about it

If they were to check your harddrive they would have to stop every single person passing by for hours.

You're right but i don't know what could happen i may get too unlucky  what is considered illegal in the States? Forgot to mention i'm travelling with my father, his spouse and my brother so it would be embarrasing if they checked my personal stuff if you know what i mean

[Xaring]

THey need a legal order from a judge in order to even turn on your computer/phone. you are safe

[thekeemo]

Just now, pugnaq said:

You're right but i don't know what could happen i may get too unlucky  what is considered illegal in the States? Forgot to mention i'm travelling with my father, his spouse and my brother so it would be embarrasing if they checked my personal stuff if you know what i mean

Wouldn't be able to say, too afraid of going there. Just use common sense. I have been through Frankfurt London Cairo Amsterdam Toronto and have not had issues with my luggage.

[Tedster]

2 minutes ago, Xaring said:

THey need a legal order from a judge in order to even turn on your computer/phone. you are safe

Depends on where you are exactly, and a court order may be easier to come by than you think.

[Enderman]

its  fine, youre allowed to bring those on the plane

[Xaring]

Just now, Tedster said:

Depends on where you are exactly, and a court order may be easier to come by than you think.

I did work at an airport in Spain  And i know that we are freer-er here than there (USA) when being able to do searches and such. Still OP will be fine 150% sure.

[thekeemo]

1 minute ago, Tedster said:

Depends on where you are exactly, and a court order may be easier to come by than you think.

In Israel they carry blank (but signed) ones in their pockets.

[Tedster]

1 minute ago, thekeemo said:

In Israel they carry blank (but signed) ones in their pockets.

Damn.

[thekeemo]

Just now, Tedster said:

Damn.

They use them mainly to setup military areas on demand which gives them *cough* legal *cough* power to shoot anyone that goes into the zone on sight to stop journalists from showing the international law violations. This isn't some conspiracy theory either it is well documented, even Robert Fisk has had some run ins with them.

[pugnaq]

14 minutes ago, Xaring said:

THey need a legal order from a judge in order to even turn on your computer/phone. you are safe

I've read that they are allowed to check them without any order 

 

" No surprises here: according to a 2008 ruling made in a federal court, customs agents at U.S. airports can inspect the contents of passengers’ laptop computers. They don’t even need any evidence to do so. The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco declared a computer to be no different to a suitcase, car or any other property subject to search at an international border. " 

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/smartphone-laptop-searches-know-rights/

14 minutes ago, thekeemo said:

Wouldn't be able to say, too afraid of going there. Just use common sense. I have been through Frankfurt London Cairo Amsterdam Toronto and have not had issues with my luggage.

I have been to Italy and France more than once for step-over flights and never had an issue but i don't know the laws of the US lol 

12 minutes ago, Tedster said:

Depends on where you are exactly, and a court order may be easier to come by than you think.

I will go to Miami for 2 hours and then take a plane to NY. I'm currently in Venezuela

12 minutes ago, Enderman said:

its  fine, youre allowed to bring those on the plane

Thank you. I just want to know if security is allowed to check my personal information in there

10 minutes ago, Xaring said:

I did work at an airport in Spain  And i know that we are freer-er here than there (USA) when being able to do searches and such. Still OP will be fine 150% sure.

 

 

 

Forgot to mention i won't take with me a laptop!

[thekeemo]

16 minutes ago, pugnaq said:

I've read that they are allowed to check them without any order 

 

" No surprises here: according to a 2008 ruling made in a federal court, customs agents at U.S. airports can inspect the contents of passengers’ laptop computers. They don’t even need any evidence to do so. The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco declared a computer to be no different to a suitcase, car or any other property subject to search at an international border. " 

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/smartphone-laptop-searches-know-rights/

I have been to Italy and France more than once for step-over flights and never had an issue but i don't know the laws of the US lol 

I will go to Miami for 2 hours and then take a plane to NY. I'm currently in Venezuela

Thank you. I just want to know if security is allowed to check my personal information in there

Forgot to mention i won't take with me a laptop!

They can but it is rare. Unless of course 

[Xaring]

Oh wow, ignore my post then, but still i dont think you'll get checked.

[pugnaq]

42 minutes ago, thekeemo said:

They can but it is rare. Unless of course 

lmao!! To the main topic should i get another hard drive and back up everything and leave it here? What should i look for? I only need about 100gb. 

20 minutes ago, Xaring said:

Oh wow, ignore my post then, but still i dont think you'll get checked.

 

[thekeemo]

Just now, pugnaq said:

lmao!! To the main topic should i get another hard drive and back up everything and leave it here? What should i look for? I only need about 100gb. 

I wouldnt bother but if you are worried I would get anything as long as it is usb 3.0

[pugnaq]

1 minute ago, thekeemo said:

I wouldnt bother but if you are worried I would get anything as long as it is usb 3.0

SanDisk Ultra Fit 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Sounds good? 64gb is plenty of space for what i have btw thanks for your responses

[Omon_Ra]

Back it all up anyways. I had flown to LA and had shot a bunch of photos and video out there. I was saving to an external hard drive, and everything was fine and dandy. When I got home the drive was all sorts of corrupted. Photos and videos were not in the right places, videos cut out half way through with lots of artifacting, if they even played at all. The strange thing was it was only for certain folders, not the entire drive. However, when I tried to copy the contents to a new drive, every time it would come to a corrupted file it would stall out and more or less crash. I took it to a local computer shop to see if there was any physical damage to the platters or anything, he ran some tests and tried using some of his stuff to pull the data off the drive and nothing worked. He said he had never seen anything like that. I told him that I had been flying with it, and he said it's possible, though very rare, that the magnets and black magic in the security scanners could have caused the drive to go bonkers like that. Also, since you're flying into the States from the Middle East, I would take any precautions against invasive TSA agents.

[thekeemo]

Just now, pugnaq said:

SanDisk Ultra Fit 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Sounds good? 64gb is plenty of space for what i have btw thanks for your responses

It will be slower than a HDD by a fair bit but it will do.

[pugnaq]

Just now, Omon_Ra said:

Back it all up anyways. I had flown to LA and had shot a bunch of photos and video out there. I was saving to an external hard drive, and everything was fine and dandy. When I got home the drive was all sorts of corrupted. Photos and videos were not in the right places, videos cut out half way through with lots of artifacting, if they even played at all. The strange thing was it was only for certain folders, not the entire drive. However, when I tried to copy the contents to a new drive, every time it would come to a corrupted file it would stall out and more or less crash. I took it to a local computer shop to see if there was any physical damage to the platters or anything, he ran some tests and tried using some of his stuff to pull the data off the drive and nothing worked. He said he had never seen anything like that. I told him that I had been flying with it, and he said it's possible, though very rare, that the magnets and black magic in the security scanners could have caused the drive to go bonkers like that. Also, since you're flying into the States from the Middle East, I would take any precautions against invasive TSA agents.

I'll fly to the States from Venezuela. I'll be there for few days and then fly to the Middle East! I will buy few other usbs to back everything up and leave them here. You had an external hard drive or a normal hard drive? 

[Omon_Ra]

11 minutes ago, pugnaq said:

I'll fly to the States from Venezuela. I'll be there for few days and then fly to the Middle East! I will buy few other usbs to back everything up and leave them here. You had an external hard drive or a normal hard drive? 

It was a 2.5" drive in an external USB enclosure. It may have been the cheap enclosure not protecting the drive enough, but who knows. It could have just been from bouncing around in my backpack as I traveled around southern California as well. *edit* However, I didn't have the issues until I got home, not at all during the trip.

[Tech Deals]

20 hours ago, Xaring said:

THey need a legal order from a judge in order to even turn on your computer/phone. you are safe

Umm...  no, they really don't...

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/may/15/computing.security

 

https://www.eff.org/wp/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-travelers-carrying-digital-devices

 

" Our lives are on our laptops – family photos, medical documents, banking information, details about what websites we visit, and so much more. Thanks to protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the government generally can’t snoop through your laptop for no reason. But those privacy protections don’t safeguard travelers at the U.S. border, where the U.S. government can take an electronic device, search through all the files, and keep it for a while for further scrutiny – without any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever. "

[Tech Deals]

20 hours ago, pugnaq said:

You're right but i don't know what could happen i may get too unlucky  what is considered illegal in the States? Forgot to mention i'm travelling with my father, his spouse and my brother so it would be embarrasing if they checked my personal stuff if you know what i mean

They wouldn't check it in public, in front of you or your family.  They also aren't going to "browse it" in real time, they wouldn't work on the live drive, they would image it first.

 

They would likely take it to a back room and image the drive, most likely giving it back to you on the spot.  That assumes they care at all, they might ignore it.  But depending on what country you're coming from, what your name is, and if you're on any lists (or have a name that matches those lists), they might keep it for a few days/weeks...

 

It is also possible you'd never get it back, they do that too sometimes, but rarely.

 

You can encrypt it, but then if they scan it, you most likely won't get it back, unless you unlock it for them.

[vanished]

21 hours ago, thekeemo said:

Wouldn't be able to say, too afraid of going there. Just use common sense. I have been through Frankfurt London Cairo Amsterdam Toronto and have not had issues with my luggage.

I've been in and out of the states with a laptop before and they didn't search anything.  Just put it through the xray thing, which is pretty cool for seeing the insides of it

[thekeemo]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

I've been in and out of the states with a laptop before and they didn't search anything.  Just put it through the xray thing, which is pretty cool for seeing the insides of it

Yes it is so compact you dont get a sense of how compact it is until you see all they layers.