Carry-on Question: What is "Hand Checking?"

(in-a-nutshell version at bottom, for you impatient types. Tongue)

the one time i've flown with my laptop, some stuff was a bit funky next time i fired her up. nothing huge, just odd stuff, like a few things on the desktop had somehow been renamed( Huh). Who's to say something worse won't happen next time. i know THEY say it's totally safe, but why risk it, right?

i read that if there's something in carry-on (such as my laptop) that i don't want going through the Super X-Ray Machine of Death, you can have it "hand checked."
what i want to know is: just what the heck does that mean? does it just mean they go over it with a hand wand, or are they gonna go at my baby with a screw-driver and allen wrenches looking for concealed mini-nukes?

Most of my stuff is backed up on an external HD(which stays at home), so my concern is a useless machine at my destination(ie. dead weight), rather than loss of data.
(though it is a pain to put everything back. do you have any idea how long it takes to transfer 130 GB of data? hint: now would be a good time to master the didgeridoo.)


bottom line: i don't want to risk my computer gettin fried in the x-ray machine. Is it worth it to request that it be hand-checked?

In my experience, you must boot ot up (be sure the batteries are charged, presumably demonstrating that it is a real computer and not a bomb.

In the film days, it was typical to have your camera hand checked in order to avoil fogging the film.

IIRC, the time delay for hand checking was trivial and well worth it.

Erik,

I've flown with a variety of laptops, starting with an Epson HX-20 in 1983, with nary a problem. In the old days you had to actually open it up and turn it on. I just flew last week with my Asus netbook and it sailed thru in its case (with just the PC in it). Don't think hand checking is of much benefit for the time it takes.

BTW, that Epson had a built in printer, similar to the old style dot matrix cash register printers. I did get some anxious looks from my fellow passengers when I started printing out a document.

Sounds like normal Microsoft Windows behavior to me. It shouldn't do that, but it does. Windows is pretty famous for mysterious icon screw-ups in my personal experience. They move, dissappear, their bitmaps change - you name it. I highly doubt the xrays had anything to do with it. Just Windows being Windows...

guess i won't bother then, as it takes about a thousand years to fully boot up(god i miss XP).

haberting, i've been through six versions of Windows on three computers and i've never had anything like that happen before or since. have had to format my dinosaur due to virus corruption a few times, and my old laptop just flat out died after a Service Pack DL(now i'm stuck with VISTA, which sucks), but nothing's ever been spontaneously moved or renamed(that i can remember) except for that one time.

BTW, anyone know if/how i can join the windows dark side(ie. downgrade from VISTA to XP on my current machine)?

Just pack it up and ship it ahead to where you're going.

The same twits who were rummaging around through your stuff, stealing stuff, and damaging stuff are all still working at the airports, but now they're called TSA.

Sue

1) The chances of a US airport X-ray machine hurting a laptop are extremely slim, especially if the laptop is completely powered down. The chances of any X-ray machine causing files to be moved or renamed is zero. Those sorts of problems are caused by humans and malicious software.

2) I understand that the TSA does not permit hand-checking laptops or anything else other than photo paper and film. Getting them to do this with photo paper and film is a lot more difficult than it used to be. I don't know if that's a policy or just unpleasantness cooked up at my local airport.

3) If you own a computer that has sensitive information on it, especially if you travel with it, I highly recommend that you use whole disk encryption. There are a number of players out there; the best one in my opinion is PGP. The best free one in my opinion is Truecrypt. I've used both extensively. The company I work for sells PGP software and I provide professional services associated with it.

4) If you travel internationally, US Customs and Border Protection has arrogated to itself the right to make you decrypt your laptop. They examine and sometimes take images of laptops once they are decrypted. Non-US border authorities also do this. They don't do this all the time, but frequently enough to be a concern.

PGP and Truecrypt both permit you to decrypt the hard drive but keep more sensitive files encrypted separately. With Truecrypt you can even have a completely hidden encrypted partition and operating system, while decrypting an innocuous and unused partition and OS for CBP to scrutinize.

While I haven't heard of CBP doing this, there are alleged cases of border authorities in other countries installing software on travelers' laptops for the purposes of industrial espionage. Whole disk encryption makes harder but not impossible; if you suspect your computer has been tampered with, reimage or reinstall it.