Morning all!
Random question, but that’s basically the role of STW, right?!
We’re planning to move house/ city/ country/ continent later this year. Among the dozens of things to sort out, I’m wondering what best practices are for IT, data etc with regards to shipping, carrying, etc.

I’ve got a home NAS with photos, music, work stuff etc; 2-3 hard drives with backups of most of it; a main laptop and a backup laptop.

We’ll be using movers for the big stuff, which I think is expected to take about 6 weeks end to end. It’ll be insured, and include all the bikes, furniture and most other stuff. Everything else we have to carry on the plane.

Sooo… the NAS probably should get shipped, but with the drives in place? The laptops I guess come with me; and then split the backup HDDs between my luggage and shipping? And HDDs should only go in carry-on, not checked baggage?

I’m slightly concerned about basically boarding a plane laden with drives, laptops etc; but the alternatives give slightly less peace of mind…

For a NAS, firstly back it up (to the cloud preferably) secondly I’d label the drives and remove them and package them in bubble wrap, foam and in a box. If you’re taking them with you on the plane I’d put them in checked baggage personally, although I guess if there’s only two or three taking as carry on shouldn’t be an issue. If it’s a small NAS you could probably take that in checked baggage?

If you’re taking them with you on the plane I’d put them in checked baggage personally

Buy one big external drive, back up the NAS onto it, and take that with you on the plane in your cabin luggage. Ship the NAS and drives as usual, provided it’s well-packaged I reckon it would be OK.

Checked bag is about the last place I’d put anything fragile or valuable.

I don’t think you are allowed to put IT equipment in the hold luggage BTW. Last time I flew to Kiwiland I had a laptop, they asked a very specific question when I checked in my luggage, and made me take it in my carry on, which was a pain.

I hate carrying laptops through security = those anxious moments when your stuff is waiting at the other end of the machines unguarded, and you are waiting to come through. Lots of opportunist theft takes place so I am told.

I hate carrying laptops through security = those anxious moments when your stuff is waiting at the other end of the machines unguarded, and you are waiting to come through. Lots of opportunist theft takes place so I am told.

Is that a thing? Surely that would be a terrible place for opportunist theft on account of it being an actual security area full of actual security and CCTV? Its hardly as if a crim could run away once they have picked up your laptop!

Actual CCTV that it needs somebody to be bothered to check, quickly, before the thief has left the building and/or the country. Have you been to Edinburgh airport? Arrivals and departures in the same terminal, thats just one example, and all the tiny wee temporary set-ups you experience transitting anywhere.

I appreciate this is just one example…

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/may/04/my-1000-macbook-air-was-stolen-at-airport-security-and-no-one-cares

I can’t imagine anyone stealing a laptop from Airport security, there are few times in your life when their are more cameras and eyes trained on you, and whilst they might not be overly interested in theft, one passenger passing luggage to another post x-ray machine would be of interest I suspect.

As for the original question, personally if they’re irreplaceable family photos etc, upload them all to the cloud. Cloud storage is super cheap these days and if you really want to save the pennies you can always cancel it again once the NAS is safely back in your possession and tested etc, although I’d keep it personally. In work we consider NAS to be a reasonable on-site back-up solution but only in conjunction with a cloud-based back-up and we’d never use one as a sole storage solution, they’re just not that robust and recovery from failed drives is expensive.

iDrive will give you 5TB of storage for $3.50 for a year if you just want it as a one-off, they’ll probably want a lot more to renew for year 2. It’s £7 a month for icloud’s biggest 2TB package, 365 comes with 1tb for most users etc.

This is helpful thanks. I did wonder about a fuller cloud backup, and 1TB would suffice. Tbh, I’d better start uploading now if I’ve any chance of getting everything uploaded by the time I move…

back up to cloud….back up to drive can carry on….pack up original equipment and airfreight with tracking…i packed my work laptop and home office PC with my bike so had all available on arrival

I did exactly what you are doing (to Australia 9 years ago).

Take your drives out of your NAS to ship it – just to stop them rattling around.
How much data are we talking about here? Just buy yourself a portable hard drive (up to 5tb now I think) copy everything across and put it in your hand luggage. If you want, buy two and stick a copy in your partners hand luggage too.

My main piece of advice is to scan all of your household/important documents and put them on dropbox (albeit temporarily) – lost count of how many times I’ve needed a copy of XYZ at a particular moment, and have been able to pull it up on my phone.

Also (we didn’t do this, but know people who did) talk to your shippers about air-freighting a single box. It obviously costs, but it’s useful for stuff that you don’t want to put in your luggage, but you don’t want to wait 6 weeks for (laptop, nas etc seem like good candidates)

Don’t forget things spin the other way down under so you’ll need to put the hdd’s into reverse 😉

My main piece of advice is to scan all of your household/important documents and put them on dropbox (albeit temporarily) – lost count of how many times I’ve needed a copy of XYZ at a particular moment, and have been able to pull it up on my phone.

Also (we didn’t do this, but know people who did) talk to your shippers about air-freighting a single box. It obviously costs, but it’s useful for stuff that you don’t want to put in your luggage, but you don’t want to wait 6 weeks for (laptop, nas etc seem like good candidates)

Those are really good points, thanks Batfink!

Cloud is mega obvs answer. If you’re gonna use Office an M365 sub comes with 6 x 1TB OneDrive storage and Argos have it on offer usually every quarter for £40 a year.

for all the bits are not travelling with you, might be worth considering whole disk encryption. really depends on what the data is.

worth noting, I’m not an IT expert, just expert at being paranoid.

for all the bits are not travelling with you, might be worth considering whole disk encryption. really depends on what the data is.

Thumb-up-emoji

Dump the data in the cloud, Bitlocker the hardware and dump it in a box, then forget about it.

Drives in ‘off’ mode are pretty resilient, it’s not the 1990s any more.

I put at least two microserves in a box with their monitors and ancillaries and left it to the movers. They survived. The laptop and stuff like iPad came with me, but then it always does.

Cougar
Full Member

Dump the data in the cloud, Bitlocker the hardware and dump it in a box, then forget about it.

Drives in ‘off’ mode are pretty resilient, it’s not the 1990s any more.

Fair enough! How does one Bitlocker NAS drives?

How does one Bitlocker NAS drives?

Dunno off the top of my head TBH, the last time I played with a consumer-grade NAS Bitlocker didn’t exist. Does it have its own encryption software? It’s presumably some form of skinned Linux?

… which is another point actually. Does Windows 10 Home have Bitlocker or is it a Pro only feature?

Anyway. Look to encrypt the disks if you’re concerned about the data falling into someone else’s hands. If all that’s on there is your holiday photos I wouldn’t worry about it.

Or actually forget to take the nas(as I did),tbh if it’s worth keeping it’s worth putting in da cloud.

I took the iMac backup drive on the plane wrapped up in middle of suitcase and stowed in hold, imac went to Spain by van in a pelican case(sh but never used ebay buy,but still eye watering £350).

Fantastic case thou and currently making a useful coffee table.

Laptop as hand luggage,all documents scanned and on iCloud.

Lots of opportunist theft takes place so I am told.

No it doesn’t. My son worked as a security officer at LHR for 18mo. Not a single report.