I’m going to be travelling to Japan in a few months and will be staying for about a year. I was originally planning to bring my desktop with me, but my family insists I’d risk damaging it and that it would take up too much luggage space. I don’t have a problem with buying a new PC while I’m there, but only if I can still access the data from my current one. I tried looking up if this was possible, but I couldn’t find anything on it. So I’m wondering is it possible to copy data from an American PC to a Japanese PC? Like, for example, if I copy the data to an external hard drive, will I then be able to copy it onto a Japanese PC or will there be compatibility issues?
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**Bringing American PC data to Japan**
I’m going to be travelling to Japan in a few months and will be staying for about a year. I was originally planning to bring my desktop with me, but my family insists I’d risk damaging it and that it would take up too much luggage space. I don’t have a problem with buying a new PC while I’m there, but only if I can still access the data from my current one. I tried looking up if this was possible, but I couldn’t find anything on it. So I’m wondering is it possible to copy data from an American PC to a Japanese PC? Like, for example, if I copy the data to an external hard drive, will I then be able to copy it onto a Japanese PC or will there be compatibility issues?
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If only one year, why don’t you just buy a laptop to bring with you? They sell them with huge amounts of memory in the U.S and most stores can transfer your data for you. This is what I did before coming here.
No problem getting the data.
Though it’s probably better for you to bring your PC if you are not already bringing a laptop. Why spend $1000+ on a new PC in Japan, that’s going to be the same but still have some difficulty as it’s setup for Japanese users when you can just bring the tower, keyboard and mouse then buy a monitor in Japan. I would really go with the computer and fewer clothes.
It’s all the same data. Flash drive, Google drive, whatever. Your laptop will work fine in Japan. Only thing you may need is a 3-prong to 2-prong adapter since plugs in Japan typically don’t have the 3rd ground prong but you can get those for like a dollar at Home Depot.
Just copy important stuff to an external and bring that? Or just bring only the HD.
There is no difference between a Japanese and an American PC, other than the keyboard and language. Windows is Windows, MacOS is MacOS, and Linux is Linux, no matter where in the world you are.
TL;DR you will have no trouble copying files as long as the file systems are compatible, and this has nothing to do with which country the computer is purchased in.
Yes.
Laptops are expensive here, so I would buy one in the States and bring it over. Prices there are better and there’s more choice with an American keyboard.
For the data, you could either put it on an external drive or on a cloud service like AWS, Dropbox or similar, then access it from there, so no need to lug hardware back and forth.
My man just discovered cloud storage
No issues bringing them in unless you are handling US export controlled information or you have illegal material.
The added advantage bring on in is the average US PC or laptop will be cheaper. It may also take some getting used to the typical Kapanese keyboard layout (which tends to differ a bit by manufacturer or if it is a JIS keyboard).
Going way back in history, Windows used to be localized versus regionalized and there were differences at the OS kernel level — some applications would not work unless they were localized for Japanese operating systems. Windows 10/11 are fully universal and can be regionalized with any display language or input language.