Traveling with a Hard-Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter A1A2
  • Start date Start date
A1A2

A1A2

New member
hi,

I will be traveling on a shuttle bus, car and airplane for about 24 hours in a couple of days, and I will be carrying my internal (IDE?) HD with me. What should I do with it to make sure it does break?

I know this isn't a great idea, but I have a lot of files to carry with me. I will backup all the important files and wrap it with thick sweater in my backpack. Is that enough??

thanks in advance

Al
 
A1A2 said:

I will be traveling on a shuttle bus, car and airplane for about 24 hours in a couple of days, and I will be carrying my internal (IDE?) HD with me. What should I do with it to make sure it does break?
Al
Click to expand...

To make sure it breaks.. I would tie a cable to it, and attach it to the back bumper of the bus. Just let it drag there for your trip, and it will definately break;)

xoxo
 
Yeah if you wanna make sure it breaks what I would simply do is take all the screws off and take the physical disc out.

Then light the disc on fire for about one minute - or if you wish you could use a microwave for perhaps 15 to 20 seconds.

Now, in case you meant you DIDN'T want it to break here is how to do that.

Go to the store and buy some bubble-packagin material. Wrap about 5 layers of it around the hard drive on both axes. Then put it in a box and fill the box with the rest of the bubble-wrap.

THis way it won't get messed up.
 
That bubble wrap is a good Idea.

But realistically.. you should understand this:

IT IS GOING TO BREAK. ALL YOUR DATA WILL BE LOST!

You feel me A1??

once more:

ALL YOUR DATA WILL BE LOST!

You should really back up anything important to optical.

BACK YOUR STUFF UP!! TO CD-R!!!

experiece teaches me this!

xoxo
 
Re: in case you didnt notice..

camn said:
ALL YOUR DATA WILL BE LOST!

xoxo
Click to expand...

mind sharing your experience real quick? the big text really hits me, really. Did you hit it against something? dropped it?

I'm seriously considering taking some time and burn CDs now...sigh

ps. sorry for the typo, I meant "not" breaking it.

Al
 
find the static bag it came in,and the box too if you still have it. wrapin it in a sweeter sounds like static waiting to happen! and back it all up. around here you can get a new HD for under $60- might be worth gettin another, copin all to both and takin one with you
 
thats a great idea.. just cloning the hard drive.

as far as the experience.. my first hard drive died when I knocked my case over. It is unlikely the BUMP that did it.. but that was the LAST STRAW.

My second hard drive that died, died for no reason whatsoever. It was just its time.

Actually, there was a reason.... the reason was this: I had a really killer session going.. and hadn't backed it up.

NOW.. I back up everything I want to keep... and my hard drives never fail.

Its all about Murphy's law. If you dont back it up... all your data will be lost! If you DO.. you will have no problems!

xoxo
 
actually though.. one time I transported an un-backedup hard drive in a foamy mic box.. and I treated it like nitroglycerin. Drove like a grandma... kept it on a pillow.....

that worked out. But it was only across town;)

xoox
 
Hard drives are fragile, but there is no reason to exagerate! After all, the discs come from factory, some get installed with soft and then transported to shops and from there to customers. The total DOA rate it pretty low. Sure we all hear horror stories....

Backup (or clone) as you are going to do, then go to a shop and ask for a used HD shipping card box. They all have some of those around. This is nothing but a box with a foam or plastic insert made specially for disks.
 
If your hard drive was shipped to you via UPS...

It has already undergone abuse that would make you shudder. Trust me. I used to work there. Even if no one purposely abuses it, it still has a fairly bumpy journey, but I have seen people intentionally fling, smash, kick, squash, and generally be unkind to packages to such an extreme that I am amazed that UPS will still accept shock sensitive things for shipping. (this is only what I have seen, just so I don't get sued, I want to emphasize that I don't know that it still goes on, or even went on any occassions except those that I personally saw.)

With that in mind, I would assume that the original packing material that a hard drive comes to you in must be a pretty damn good way of protecting it, assuming you still have it. I worked at a computer store for a few years, and I would also strongly suggest a static bag. You can get one from anyplace that builds computers (mom+pop type computer shops throw them out by the dozens).

Come to think of it, a computer store would probably have the orignal packing material from a few hard drives, too, so maybe ask them for that, too, if you have not left for your trip yet.

Hope this helps
 
I let the military ship my PC when I deployed...everything came back ok... wet ... but ok...

computer components are practically indestructable... haveing many friends work on integration lines, most components will easily pass gravity tests.

bear in mind that the us army has computer systems (RDL's) that are "airborne" capable rated to last atleast three jumps...and they're basically Dell laptops

CD-R is the best choice though...
 
you don't have to worry about anything. Just think about laptops: you can do with them whatever you want and the hd will always work.

I'd suggest to get a second hard drive and make an image of your primary hard drive. That's the cheapest backup you can have, coz even a 80GB drive costs less than 100 buxx these days. If your primary hard drive fails, you can just boot from the other one. We use this at work all the time and its an effective & cheap backup solution.
 
I was just reading an article interviewing the drummer from Blues Traveler who has singlehandedly taken on the project of recording all of their shows live with a digital setup so they can release live albums after each tour. One of the questions was something to the effect of "What has been one of the big obstacles of doing this recording on the road" and his reply was "Dropping a hard drive and losing data, those things are sensitive!". He treats them like glass slippers now. I had never really thought about HD's being able to lose data by taking a tumble so it was an eye opener.

I think Havoc is right about not going overboard, but in this instance if this drive is holding your music I wouldn't take any chances. I think the advice to either back it up to another HD, or else to CDR is your safest route. Think about how you'd be kicking yourself if you lost important info because you didn't. Besides, if you get a backup HD, after your trip you can clear it and use it later. You can never have to many HD's around when your recording! :p

Another thing...when the airport scans your luggage can that hurt HD's?

LMAO on the UPS comment. I had a friend who worked there as a loader and he told me some stories about people getting frustrated on the job and how that resulted in some less than optimal handling of the boxes. I still ship UPS, but now I pack it extra safe :D
 
backing up on a separate hd is by far the best and most cost effective solution. You can even program your computer so it makes a 1:1 bootable copy of your primary hard drive at a specified time, e.g. at 4AM at night. If your hd crashed, well, just boot from the other one. No problem. Then you just re-format the defective hd and use that as backup hd (excluding the sectors that crashed).

One other thing: its not a question if but when your hard drive will crash coz they have a limited life time. We have a cluster of cross-mounted computers in our office and every other week one of the hard drives crashes. Restoration from backup doesn't have to be problem.
 
one more thing worth noticing:

the lifetime of your HDs depends almost only on how often you switch your computer on and off. That's a real killer. You should never switch your computer off if you have sufficient cooling. Just turn off the monitor.
 
giganova mentions a point which has 2 camps. The , "Don't ever turn your computer off, unless you have to" camp, and the, "You need to reboot every so often/it doesn't hurt it to turn it off." camp.

I personally refuse to take sides on that one, but if you rest on the "don't turn it off" side of the fence, you should turn off power mgmt for your hard drives, too. Power mgmt can cause your HDDs to "spin down" after a specified amount of time, which could be considered similar to powering down the whole drive.

You should have power mgmt turned off for the HDDs anyway, if you are doing any digital audio work, the power ups (after powering down) can be untimely, and cause lag or jitter at innoportune moments.

Gig and zek make really good points, they are pretty tough when they are mounted ina computer, no doubt. When thye are out of a PC, tho, I dunno, they seem to be more fragile, IMHO. I can understand why as far as static goes (Condoms save lives!always use a bag on a naked drive!), but I swear, they seem to be way more finiky when they are not in a computer.

Maybe the case absorbs or deflects some of the shock, I dunno...


Bass Master - yep I KNOW it went on when I worked there. never by me, of course......lol.
 
I regularly travel with my 80GB external. No problemo!

Don't let these dipshits scare you into anything you wouldn't do to back up this dog were it stationary.

That's all folks!
 
damage happens when the idler arm skips or bounces on the platter usualy rendering the drive useless, they may have gotten better at vibration methods recently but from what i understand you never drop or bump a hard drive period...

humm, makes me wonder about laptops/notebooks etc... i don't own so i can't say...

some drives must be better but i have no idea which ones...

i read a few years ago where a guy was going to a lan gaming party and his system failed when he got there, yup, hard drive gone, he said he carried the system up front in the passengers seat with seat belt on and never hit any potholes or jared it, again, ummm...

about -2 cent worth i know :)

as the others here said, backup is absolute, preiod...
 
I would burn CD's... and take those with me... not the HD.

The CD's will probably be more use to you in the new location, whereas installing a HD could be another issue.

Getting a 2nd HD for your system for backup is a good idea, too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top