Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!mtune!codas!cpsc6a!rtech!wrs!dg From: dg@wrs.UUCP (David Goodenough) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Do You Protect Portables/Disks in Air Travel? Message-ID: <275@wrs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 24-Jul-87 17:37:02 EDT Article-I.D.: wrs.275 Posted: Fri Jul 24 17:37:02 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jul-87 01:24:57 EDT References: <862@dasys1.UUCP> Reply-To: dg@wrs.UUCP (David Goodenough) Organization: Wind River Systems, Emeryville, CA Lines: 26 In article <862@dasys1.UUCP> axelson@dasys1.UUCP (Kevin Axelson) writes: >Can disk data be damaged by magnetic fields encountered during commercial air >travel (e.g. from screening devices or elsewhere)? > >If so, what is the best tactic for reducing the risk? Does anyone take extra- >ordinary measures with their hard-disk equipped laptops? From first hand experience I will say that I once was carting a 2400 foot reel of mag tape (ALMOST FULL) across the country, and I let airport security zap it with their X-ray machine. In my innocence I knew that X-rays alone were not too harmful, but I forgot the medium sized magnetic fields produced by most x-ray machines. I lost about two years worth of source in one go :-(. Since then I've never let airport security near any magnetically encoded media - floppys / hard disk systems / mag tape audio tapes / video tapes or anything. What I do is to get them to examine whatever it is by hand - I'm not letting them x-ray it, and I'm not about to walk through the magnetic gun detctor with it, so that only leaves the visual inspection option. After four / five years of this I've never had an objection (quite a lot of odd looks - but no objections) -- dg@wrs.UUCP - David Goodenough +---+ | +-+-+ +-+-+ | +---+