Bringing HD's over seas ...

[Dulak]

I may be moving overseas (the UK) and am wondering about some things in regards to brining my HDs.
live in US atm

1. Can xrays hurt my data on the HDs?

2. Whats the best way to bring them over ie carry-on or check in luggage or does it really matter?

3. Is there any reason they would 'confiscate' the drives or something like that or charge my a import tax etc ...?

4. Is there a way I can make sure that my data on my drivers would be protected ie that noone could access it? anyway to make all the data PW protected or something? ie I want to bring over a lot of sensitive data and wouldnt want anyone to have access to it incase whatever - lost luggage etc (they always lose my luggage on plane rides).
Or if they wanted to see what I have on the HDs? or???

thanks ...

 

[taylorwilsdon]

If you're actually moving, why would you bring individual harddrives on a plane? I assume you're going to have your possessions fedexed to your new home, why wouldn't you just leave your harddrives with the rest of your stuff?

 

[Dulak]

hmmm well I may end up brining some computer parts over or maybe my whole computer (hadnt decided yet).

And if I just brought parts like my HDs with all my stuff on them was wondering about having a chance of them lost or searched or something of that nature.

 

[madcoder]

Hi. I travel overseas constantly it seems for the work, and have taken hard drives on many occasions. I usually just put them in my carry-on laptop bag. They will normally sit end to end in the bag next to my laptop (put a bit of bubble wrap around each one, OR put them in those plastic clam-shells that come with the Seagate drives or else if one drive slips past the other in the normal moving around, you could knock some surface mount parts off the pc board). Depending on how big your bag is, you can fit four to six hard drives this way very easily. They WILL check what the heck all that metal is at the metal detectors, so I have a habbit, of not only removing the laptop, but any extra computer goodies I have (including hard drives), and placing them in a separate container to go through the xray. No, the xray won't hurt them. This always saves time because then they just might glance in the container and then let you go on. If you leave them in the bag, then you WILL get the, "We need to have a look in your bags, sir," business, in which case you will be there three times as long. The most that ever happened at that point is a conversation with a guy about hard drive sizes because I was carrying a 750gb drive. These guys that check baggage are totally separate from any customs officials you might encounter at the other end. If you are moving there, and the drives are not brand new or something, then your hardware should be covered under the same rules whether you hand carry it in, or it is being shipped there with your stuff.

 

[madcoder]

Regarding your question about encryption, I can't imagine what you have there that you might be so worried about, because if it is confidential information, then you ought to have it encrypted to begin with regardless of the travel. Having said that, if you have only a handful of things that should be encrypted, then I would suggest, using TrueCrypt (open source), and making a partition for those things. After moving them there, then you will need to do a secure wipe of the free space on the drive (or move all this stuff to one drive that is TrueCrypt encrypted, whole drive, or with a file-volume encryption), and then secure wipe any drives you have left that you moved everything off of. If you want to secure everything in place, including your current Windows/whatever installation, then I would suggest a whole disk encryption product. I have used Pointsec, and SafeGuardEZ (by Utimaco), both in corporate scenarios, and they are both good. I am not sure if there is an easy way to get Pointsec, as I think they don't have a consumer online sotre, but Utimaco does. PGP also makes a whole disk encryption package, but I wouldn't trust them, as they have not been doing it as long as the others. I did read some bad experiences some folks had with PGP on their forum a few years back. I haven't tested it though personally, since I am ok with the other listed solutions. Then, there is the Microsoft Vista whole disk encryption solution, if you already run Vista, and you trust Microsoft to do this, which I do not at this point. I hope the information helps, let me know if you have any other questions, because I have taken lots of hardware back and forth with me on the planes.

 

[madcoder]

Actually, my last reply was probably confusing now that I read it. It boils down to this:

Option A:
Free solution, something like TrueCrypt. With this you make a file that is encrypted, and is mountable. Once mounted the file shows up as a drive letter. Truecrypt, can do it this way, or you can select a whole partition of a drive that will become encrypted space. Anything in that space (whether is it a file that get initialized, or you chose to use a whole partition) will be lost, so you need the free space to create this secure area. You can then move all the data you want secured into the new secure volume. However, you need to securely wipe the space that you moved it FROM. To do this, then you need a free space wiper, or if there is nothing left on that hard drive, then you can do a secure wipe of the hard drive. There are also free tools for that.

Option B:
Do an in place encryption of the entire drive contents using one of the commecial solutions I listed above. Using this, there is no need to wipe any free space or anything afterwards because the entire disk gets encrypted in place. The downside is that it costs money.