Ask Slashdot: Transporting Computers By Cargo Ship?

JabrTheHut writes "I'll be packing up and moving to another continent soon. Everything I own will be packed up into boxes and loaded onto a cargo container, which in turn will be loaded onto a ship and will sail from Northern Europe, through the equator and then to its final destination. It will be in transit for up to 8 weeks. What do I need to do to ensure my stuff survives the trip? I've got anti-static bags and silica gel for graphics cards and hard disks, which won't be in the computers, mostly, when they move, and some of what I own will be crated in order to protect both against physical damage and humidity. I'll throw in a couple of packets of silica gel into each box or crate. Clothes get moth balls. But what have I missed? Will the printer ink survive? Do I have to worry about batteries? What haven't I thought of?"

Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? This is what constitutes an 'Ask Slashdot' these days? No wonder Taco left and Geeknet sold them...

backup data and replace

[smi.james.th]

Personally I would have just backed the data up and carried the hard drives with me if I were moving continents. Computer hardware isn't that expensive to replace.

If you're intent on doing it that way though, it might help to package the stuff in its original boxes, I know many people do keep them. They're suitable for shipping.

Packaging

[Ford Prefect]

Simple - put things into packaging approximating what they originally came in. Worked fine for me, with a range of computing hardware and an inkjet printer travelling from Europe to Washington State.

(How do you think much of your computing stuff made its way from China to begin with?)

Own less stuff

[Magic5Ball]

Why not take this opportunity to simplify your life by owning less stuff? It would save you from having to pack, ship, track, and store everything.

There are far more opportunities available if you're mobile enough to fit your life into a couple of suitcases and leave the bulky/sentimental stuff with relatives. More importantly, your spending will naturally shift from things to people and experiences that can't get damaged or lost in transit.

Best bet

[CodeInspired]

Sell, pawn, or throw pretty much everything away and get new stuff when you get there. If you are paying for the shipping, I'm willing to bet almost everything you are shipping is not worth the cost to ship it. Ship the sentimental stuff (pictures, videos, gifts, etc) and take the super important things with you on the plane. I'm pretty sure a used ink cartridge for your printer is not worth shipping across the globe and waiting 8 weeks for it.

Re:backup data and replace

[Spazmania]

We have a winner.

Hand-carry or air-ship your media. Pack the rest like you would for shipping it UPS and don't overthink it.

Re:Heat.

[funwithBSD]

I can't imagine the heat doing much compared to the running tempretures of a normal PC. 70C is not out of the picture in an overclocked system, and it survives just fine.

Besides, how do you think it got over here in the first place? Shipped by cargo ship from the far east.

Personally, I would hand carry any media I wanted to protect. The data is important, the hardware is an inconvenience.

Re:Heat.

[bonehead]

Yep, have a backup of important data that you carry on your person during the trip. The hardware can pretty much be haphazardly stuffed into boxes and not worried about.

Computers are not the delicate, fragile devices that so many people insist on treating them as. If they were laptops could not exist.

Your biggest problem isn't humidity...

[Dr_Harm]

Your biggest problem isn't humidity, it's going to be salt. Those cargo containers are not airtight, and if nothing else your crates and pallets may be sitting on a dock for an extended period of time. If things are in well-sealed cardboard boxes, it shouldn't be an issue... but you're not very clear on how your stuff is being packed.

Consider getting one of the large rolls of cling-film used for shipping (i.e. similar to saran-wrap). For electronics (TV, computer, printer, maybe even the coffee machine) wrap them individually with the cling-film; it's not perfect, but if done well (i.e. tightly and completely) that should choke-off any salt spray from finding it's way inside.

Also, anything that is on a pallet (but not a crate) should be wrapped and strapped so that the (a) the pallet stays in one piece, and (b) it is tamper-evident.

Re:Prepare to lose everything

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

While the subject line is a bit sensational, I do think it's worth warning potentially naive people that they can lose everything in a move, even if unlikely. As a child my family hired a reputable moving company to move almost all of our belongings about 700 miles from a northern US state to a southern one. It was near the end of the year, so unbeknown to us, the driver actually drove the van north to spend New Year's with his family and abandoned it in a shopping center where it was robbed. What they didn't take, the robbers dumped in the snow to get ruined. We lost everything we didn't take with us in the car, including irreplaceable family photos of me and my brother as young children. The moving company fought us in court and in the end since my family was not rich and could not afford a protracted lawsuit, we had to settle for a price that probably didn't truly cover our losses but got most of them. I remember some years ago in school encountering another student with a similar story, but events like this are rare. People just need to understand that while it is probably unlikely that the OP will lose everything, the odds are probably a lot higher than he likely realizes and it's not a "1 in a million" event.