Computers & Networking

[TechGirl]

Hi,

I searched in the internet & discovered some somewhat scary infor about people that had their laptops go through the X-ray machine at the airport & after going through it been messed up! 

Which is the safest way to have it checked & not get messed up!?.

Thankz

TechGirl

[RealGeorgeW Valued Expert]

Hey TechGirl

I've been through many many airport security check points with my laptop and never had a problem. The only precaution I could recommend is making sure it's off. Other than that you should be fine.

[Entropy]

I've taken laptops through airport checkpoints many times too without any problems.

It's a good thing, since you are now legally required to take the laptop out of its bag and send it through the X-rat machine separately.

Really, the only things that are known to have issues with airport X-rays are unexposed/undeveloped photographic film.

[Nokia]

These people either dropped their laptops, or were just lying. It is not possible for the low-power Beta radiation used in these machines to harm a laptop.

[Entropy]

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Nokia wrote:
These people either dropped their laptops, or were just lying. It is not possible for the low-power Beta radiation used in these machines to harm a laptop.

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If the laptop were running it MIGHT be possible to crash it by flipping a bit in RAM (since it's not rad-hard RAM or a rad-hard CPU), but it's not possible for an airport X-ray machine to do permanent damage to an unpowered laptop.

[Entropy]

Oh, just thought of this:

Don't put the laptop through if it's hibernating in a suspend-to-RAM mode.  It's effectively powered on then.

[Nokia]

Nope, still not possible. The radiation is stopped by the case and any metal in the unit.

[Entropy]

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Nokia wrote:
Nope, still not possible. The radiation is stopped by the case and any metal in the unit.

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The point of X-rays is to at least partially penetrate many metals (with lead being one of the exception).

X-rays will also typically go right through plastic.

Again, they won't do permanent damage - they'll cause what space systems engineers call a single upset event (SEU), effectively a bit in operational electronics (especially RAM) getting flipped.  SEUs can crash running systems but don't cause permanent damage.

So in short - make sure the unit is fully shut down (not just hibernating) and everything will be fine.