# Can I take my External Hard Drive ?



## Maxie (Oct 6, 2014)

Hi 

I am just wondering if I can take my external Hard drives with me when moving to Australia on a PR Visa (Subclass 190 SS ACT). I have two of these ( 1 TB each) and I have a collection of movies, photos, TV series, videos , etc on them.
Do I need to encrypt these ? 

Please suggest , I am flying on 29 Oct 2014. 

-Maxie


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## _shel (Mar 2, 2014)

Not an issue, personally wouldn't put them in luggage. We sent hubbies mac & drives with a shipper, took about a week, wasnt encrypted.


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## mainak (Feb 14, 2014)

> personally wouldn't put them in luggage


What's the risk foreseen here?


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## _shel (Mar 2, 2014)

Being trashed from careless baggage handlers throwing them around. Being stolen by the same light fingered baggage handlers or damaged by multiple times through xray!


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## happybuddha (Sep 28, 2012)

Maxie said:


> Hi
> 
> I am just wondering if I can take my external Hard drives with me when moving to Australia on a PR Visa (Subclass 190 SS ACT). I have two of these ( 1 TB each) and I have a collection of movies, photos, TV series, videos , etc on them.
> Do I need to encrypt these ?
> ...


Also note, copyright laws are very tight here. In an event where you are chosen for further scrutinization be prepared to show how/where you purchased your movies, pdfs etc. 

I heard that even if you are carrying a kindle and if you get an officer who is too anal about things, they will calculate the price difference of books Amazon US/AU and make you pay the duty, how much ever small the fee may be. Of course, this is an extreme case. If I were you, I'd upload my stuff into a cloud drive and download it while here. Not that the internet speeds are too great here.


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## _shel (Mar 2, 2014)

Yes cloud drives are the way to go, no need to lug a hard drive everywhere.


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## TheExpatriate (Feb 7, 2014)

_shel said:


> Yes cloud drives are the way to go, no need to lug a hard drive everywhere.


What's better than both are personal NAS (personal clouds) like WD MyCloud and MyCloud Mirror. I have one at home .. my very own cloud


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## kumaraseem (Sep 24, 2014)

I have heard of cases where the officers at the airport conduct random checks to see if the people are bringing in pirated content like music, software, movies, porn, etc. They will also force you to decrypt your drive and show the content and if you refuse then they will confiscate the drive/laptop and even ask you to appear in the court.

This is from reading reports on some forums sometime back. Better to upload your data and download once in AU. And do encrypt your data.


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## _shel (Mar 2, 2014)

They can but not every passenger and usually looking for more unsavoury, illegal in Australia recordings. Suppose you would have to give them reason to check, either known to them or they find other suspect material.


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