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Seagate is looking to push its full disk encryption (FDE) hard drives and is getting help from Dell in doing so. FDE drives come in both 5400RPM and 7200RPM flavors in capacities up to 320GB in Dell Latitude and Precision notebooks, and also Dell's Optiplex 960 desktops. According to Seagate, 500GB FDE drivers will be available by the end of 2008.
All information stored on Seagate's FDE drives are automatically encrypted and require a password before being accessed. Without the password, Seagate claims the drive essentially locks up. That could be bad news if an end-user manages to forget the password, but in this scenario, the drive can be unlocked remotely by IT staff using McAfee's ePO software. This only applies to the enterprise level, however, and when the drives become available in the consumer market, no such workaround exists, at least not yet.
From a performance standpoint, Seagate claims there are no noticeable performance impacts as FDE drives encrypt data as it is being written and decrypt when being read.
Image Credit: Seagate
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[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/paul_lilly
[2] http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40106/135/
[3] http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=dn_sec_intro_fde&vgnextoid=1831bb5f5ed93110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD
[4] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/seagate_momentus_70002
[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/quantum_encryption_system_deemed_unbreakable_wont_send_you_hurling_through_time
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/seagate_launches_industryfirst_15tb_desktop_drive_destroys_storage_worldstone
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