I'm moving over to Jeddah, KSA, and I would like to take my laptop, spare hard drive and a range of USB sticks on which I store resources for my job. I've searched online to find out if this will be a problem and haven't found anything. Does anyone know if it is possible to take over electronic materials without a problem?

Possible, yes. Without a problem.... um.

The Saudi customs will usually leave sticks and disks alone, but sometimes go through mad confiscating sprees.

Would be safer to back up everything to your laptop / the cloud before you go.

I heard a lot of roumors about scanning laptops, your drives, sticks amd memory cards. This never happend to me.
All your baggage will be screened by Saudi customs on immigration (goes thru screening device like in any airport). Just only once they asked me to open it and ... they sniffed the half-empty bottle of water.
BTW. when signing your immmigration form you sign your death sentence in case of drug trafficking.

It has happened to colleagues of mine. Both USB sticks and external hard drives have been taken.

I always take my USB sticks to Saudi empty.

Any data storage taken through customs may be scanned at the airport and held pending clearance.

This includes laptops, memory sticks, hard drives, CD's, DVD's.

It's random and rare but it does occasionally happen. Never happened to me in over 8 years of travel to this place.

Heres a tip. Buy a 16 GB SDHC micro card and carry it on your person.

Laptop-sized external hard disks fit surprisingly well into the back pockets of jeans. Just don't sit down

Make sure you leave room in your bag for your brewing kit!!!!

I frequently travel back and fourth with all my electronic gear, if you are unfortunate to get searched then they are just looking for porn and ripped films and software amongst yours sticks and drive

and what else would you possibly store on all those usb drives? it's not like they're going to care about your 2GB thumbdrive with work documents is it?