Early in 2007, Seagate Technology will begin shipping its first widely available hard drives with built-in encryption. The Momentus 5400 FDE.2 (which stands for Full Disk Encryption 2) will include a special encryption chip that will make it impossible for anyone to read data off the disk, or even boot up a PC, without some form of authentication. Designed for notebook computers, the 2.5-inch, 5400 rpm drive will come with a storage capacity of 80GB, 120GB, or 160GB.
Users could give a password to gain access to the drive, but Seagate expects notebook vendors to also develop other authentication systems such as fingerprint and smart card readers.