Dan Warne08 June 2006, 6:47 AM
The guy who sold his notebook on eBay and found his embarrassing personal photos and details published on the internet must be kicking himself that he didn't data-scrub the hard-drive properly. If only he'd had Seagate's new self-encrypting hard-drive that was announced today.
The guy who sold his notebook on eBay and found his embarrassing personal photos and details published on the internet [caution: offensive content] must be kicking himself that he didn't data-scrub the hard-drive properly.If only he'd had Seagate's new self-encrypting hard-drive that was announced today.
It has inbuilt AES-128 encryption and Seagate claims the encryption speed of the Momentus 5400.2 FDE can encrypt and decrypt data at "link speed", so there's no slowdown in throughput.
If Seagate's claims prove to be true, the technology could be useful even for personal laptops.
Sure, software encryption might be OK for corporate laptops, where it's an IT-department-mandated-policy, but who's going to use software encryption on a personal notebook if it slows things down substantially.
With Seagate's drive, if you lose your notebook or someone pinches it, they'd have to enter a password at pre-OS-boot time to get access to the hard drive data. If they try removing the drive from the notebook and reading it on another PC, the data is encrypted at the hardware level.
Kevin Lee from Seagate said the hard-drive has an administrator password and a user password. The user has to enter a password at boot-time in order to access the data on the drive, but if they forget it, there's also a unique administrator password that an IT department could use to gain access.
Seagate's Vista drive and more
Seagate also announced a raft of other new hard drives today:
A 750GB external hard-drive that uses the new eSATA connector: (external SATA) and comes with a PCI eSATA card to counter the sluggish response from PC makers to including the new port.
Fast, big notebook drive: Momentus 7200.2: A 2.5" notebook hard drive with 7,200rpm spindle speed, up to 160GB capacity and 8MB cache. Release date: first quarter next year.
Low power flash hybrid drive: Momentus 5400.2 PSD: A 2.5" notebook hard-drive up to 160GB with 256MB inbuilt flash memory, along the lines of Samsung/Microsoft's hybrid-flash hard drive that allows Windows Superfetch to work. Seagate claims "up to 50 per cent better battery life" due to reduced frequency of the drive spinning up and faster boot time. Release date: first quarter next year.
High capacity iPod drive: ST18: A 60GB-per-platter 1.8in hard drive for iPod-like portable devices. Release date: first quarter next year.
Mobile phone drive: ST1.3: A 12GB hard drive for mobile phones with a spin rate of only 3,600rpm but no doubt very low power usage. Release date: fourth quarter of this year.
Home theatre hard drive: DB35: A 750GB hard drive for PVRs using "technology that ensures streaming continuity and is very quiet and has low heat output." Release date: third quarter 2006.
Networked hard drive with Mac compatibility in up to 500GB capacity: Seagate Mirra Personal Server 2.0
Game console hard drive: LD25.2: A 2.5" gaming console drive in capacities of 20/40/60/80GB. Seagate's Kevin Lee says it would be higher but for the fact that there's no demand from gaming console makers for higher capacities. Release date: first quarter next year.
Capacity-boosted Pocket Drive: Seagate's 1 inch 'hockey puck' drive has been upgraded in capacity from 6GB to a new high of 8GB. Release date: third quarter this year.
Savvio 10K.2: 10,000rpm. 147GB. No doubt very hot, very noisy, very expensive. Not that we're making assumptions here. Release date: second quarter this year (any time now.)
Cheetah 15K.5: 15,000rpm. 300GB. Even hotter, noisier and more expensive. Just a hunch. Release date: second quarter this year.