Will HDD and CD damage by airport X ray machine?

[Lvsheng]

Does anyone try it before, when you traveling, will the CD or HDD being damage by those airport X ray machine?

 

[pm]

No, there will be no damage to either of them.

And yes, I have tried this before - I have put my laptop through several times, and I nearly always bring several CD's on the plane and they are always fine too.

At the low-power used by airport X-ray machines, there will be no damage to either.

 

[Turbopit]

Why would X-ray damage a HD?

 

[Lvsheng]

I dunno how they will damage, but I just worry about that. My teacher told me that last time when she took a flight, her CD got damaged by those X ray machine.

For the HDD, may be those high frequency wave will corrupt the chip content, or somehow can damage those ferum oxide the platter, I dunno? But just concern about this so I can bring my HDD on my next trip.

 

[pm]

I'm just guessing on a lot of this, so feel free to tell me I'm wrong if you disagree: I think it would be hard to permanently damage either a CD or a HD with X-rays. If the HD was actually operational, medium to high power X-rays could be absorbed into the semiconductor chips which make up the control electronics and could flip the internal bits of memory elements causing data loss. But the HD would have to be powered up. Powered down, I can see how low-power X-rays would do anything. At higher-power, you could change some of the structural properties of the materials. But these would have to be really high-power.

Airport x-ray machines are so low power that they have virtually no effect on film - which are, by their very nature, very sensitive to photons and x-rays. HD's and CD's are not sensitive at all to photons or X-rays - so they are far less less likely to be affected. Perhaps CD-RW's could have a relatively low threshold for X-rays, but even these wouldn't be affected by the low power levels used in airports.

Based on my knowledge, a lot of years of education in low-level physics and my background as a professional engineer, I would have to say that your teacher is wrong. I can't imagine that an airport machine could have any effect on a CD.

 

[Lvsheng]

Well, thanks pm for your advise. Now I can safely bring my HDD to airport using Seagate SeaShell. Well I really need to teach my teacher back this time. Ha Ha. Thanks for all the advise, guys.