External hard drives - advice

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Thanks everyone for your help. I got a Western Digital Passport 360GB (went for a compact design) plus a hard case and I'll wrap it in bubble wrap. Very helpful advice from you all.

Staples sells static free bubble wrap. I'm sure other places sell it too. I'd hate to see static from plastic hurt your HD.

kinda unnecessary when it's an external usb hard drive ain't it?

There will be some sort of bare metal at the connections. If I were using bubble wrap why not buy static free? Or use the original box it came in (since it's new). In the nuke business it's all about redundancy.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Portable drives are pretty durable - at least on the branded ones the port connectors are usually covered with a plastic door or rubber flap. If you get a carry case with it - you shouldn't need any more than that.

Unless you drop it onto a hard floor - you're not going to damage it. The bouncing about on the plane isn't going to hurt it.

[GaryC 7]

We have a 120 gig Maxtor that I gave Luz. She used it for several years in the Philippines and when she moved she filled it up with her music and pictures and brought it here.

Are you ever stopped at customs for that sort of thing? Not to kick off the whole jolly roger debate, but I've got some unlicensed anime here on my computer I'll be bringing over (it's a desktop, so shipped) which is probably a whole grey area regarding legality. Is it best to err on the side of caution and make sure anything present is above board?

Stu

They didn't ask about it when I entered the Philippines with it and they didn't question it when it came back to the USA. Don't know if we were lucky or they just didn't care.