Class 2 Components: Storage

Class 2 components are storage media for non-volatile data.

Do not put magnetic media (including floppy disks, hard drives, video cassette tape) through airport X-ray machines. The X-rays themselves are not the problem -- it's the magnetic fields from the conveyor-belt motors that all too often erase magnetic media.

Optical media -- Compact Disks (CDs) and the similar-looking DVDs -- are completely immune to magnetic fields. They can be run through airport X-ray machines without any problems.

Flash memory is also immune to magnetic fields.

Sometimes one can distinguish between "fixed media" (the hard drive) that is more or less permanently mounted inside the computer case, and "removable media" (just about every other kind of media) that is easy to pull from one computer and put into another computer.