Seagate's 1TB HDD With Native Encryption

Seagate announces a 3.5-inch 1TB hard drive with full disc AES encryption and a 250GB notebook hard drive.


Seagate this week announced two new hard drives for desktops and notebook computers. The new desktop hard drive is a 1TB 3.5-inch internal drive with integrated government-grade encryption technology to keep data safe from unauthorized users. The drive is called the Barracuda FDE for full disk encryption and is the world’s first 3.5-inch desktop hard drive with native encryption and uses the same technology as the Momentus FDE notebook hard drives.

Seagate employs AES, which is the strongest level of commercially available encryption protocols. The Barracuda FDE encrypts the entire drive’s contents for full protection when the system is off. Booting a computer with a Baraccuda FDE drive requires the user to enter a pre-boot password. The Barracuda FDE desktop drive is available in capacities up to 1TB and has a 7200-rpm spindle speed.

To reach this high level of storage, Seagate employs perpendicular magnetic recording technology it pioneered on the 750GB Barracuda hard drive last year. The Momentus 5400.4 also has improved durability with an operating shock tolerance of 325 Gs and a non-operating shock tolerance of 900 Gs.

The Momentus 5400.4 is scheduled to ship to system builders in the fourth quarter of 2007 and the Barracuda FDE is on track for shipment in 2008. Seagate has no comment on pricing of either drive at this time.

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