Seagate launches updated version of drive encryption
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted Oct 31st 2006 7:59AM
posted Oct 31st 2006 7:59AM
There's nothing like starting the week with a little encryption, eh? Seagate has just announced an update to its hardware-based built-in drive encryption. Previously, the company had brought Full Disk Encryption to its Momentus 5400.2 mobile drive. This new update ships with 128-bit AES and a "faster serial advanced technology attachment interface." Essentially, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, all data traveling to or from the disk will be encoded and decoded by the encryption chip. However, there's one little problem, as Scott Shimomura, senior product marketing manager for Seagate, told the Chronicle: "If the password has been lost to the drive, then, yes, the drive becomes unusable." That means all your data. Consumers should expect to pay a $100 or less per drive premium for the privilege and should see the updated drives on shelves in the beginning of 2007.[Via CIO, illustration courtesy The San Francisco Chronicle]
Another article I read pointed out that the nature of the encryption allows you to wipe the drive in a matter of seconds, by just deleting the keys, rather than the hours it generally takes to wipe a hard drive properly.
I think that is quite a feature for the security conscientious.
cant wait for these to start appearing in laptops with fingerprint readers, that would make, I suspect, a very secure system.
That is until someone chops off your finger.
If you forget your password, you're screwed.
Fingerprint readers on laptops are a convenience, not a security. There's always a password option available to bypass it.
FYI, a fingerprint password is less secure than a very good alphanumeric password. There are like 2,000 variations of fingerprints based on the resolution of the typical commericially available scanners.
I just use Truecrypt. The best part about truecrypt is that it is 100% FREE! I encrypt my entire data partition. http://www.truecrypt.org/
TrueCrypt is brilliant, and gives faaar more flexibility than a hardware-based solution, not the least of which is plausible deniability in case you're forced to reveal the password, file-based in addition to partition-based encryption, higher security than this hardware solution, etc.
Return of the IBM Fritz chip, a.k.a. secure computing with all of it's lovely privacy concerns?? PLease tell me this is different!
I wonder if the US government has back door into this, seems to me every spy outfits or Al Qaeda operatives may wants one of those!