Three of the largest IT industry players, Seagate, Dell and McAfee, teamed up to design and deliver a data encryption solution for PCs, meant to address an issue caused by the large number of notebook computers that are stolen every day, leading to the loss of extremely valuable data, often more valuable than the notebook itself. The new solution announced by Seagate works without the user even knowing it’s there. We're talking about a self encrypting hard disk drive, a computer that includes it and a software management solution to be implemented in the future.

The new hard drives have been manufactured by Seagate and are included in the Momentus FDE family. Seagate has developed a self-encrypting method for its 2.5-inch hard drives, the full-disk encryption, or FDE. Dell is the PC vendor which took upon itself the implementation of the new hard drives in a range of its business computers, while McAfee announced that its part in the team would be to develop and provide enterprise-wide management solutions.

The new Seagate Momentus FDE notebook HDDs come in two flavors, 5400rpm and 7200rpm, respectively. Both models feature 320GB and 16GB storage capacities and the company plans 500GB versions for the beginning of the next year. The difference between the two flavors, besides the spinning, is the cache size, 8MBs for the 5400rpm Momentus FDE, and 16MB for the 7200rpm version. Both models come with SATA controller interface and built-in AES encryption, which can encrypt the entire content of the hard drive transparently and automatically.

The drives have been designed for enterprise use, but they can be used by all who just like any 2.5-inch SATA hard drive. After the HDD is installed, users will have to enter a BIOS password, after which they log on as usual, only that the encryption is activated. The drive cannot be read by any other machine if it is taken out of the notebook. The content of the hard drive is available to the owner only, as long as the password is used properly.

This hardware-based encryption engine featured by Seagate's Momentus FDE hard drives offers advantages over the software based solutions in that it eliminates overhead (boot-up delays, system slowdowns) and the BIOS authenticates the user for transparent security. The price for the new drives is not too high in comparison with the features they offer. The 160GB 7200rpm version would set users back $150. Those that would not want to install the drives for themselves can find them in Dell business PCs like the Latitude laptops, Precision Mobile Workstations and OptiPlex desktops.

The enterprise-wide management from McAfee will be available in the future, yet no specific time frame has been announced.