Seagate intros encrypted hard drive

HARD DRIVE firm Seagate released three new drives today, all of which seem interesting. It put out a fast SAS/FC Cheetah 15k.6, an encrypting HD, and a high capacity notebook drive.

The 15k.6 drives are the more interesting ones, they have two things that make them stand out. They have perpendicular recording and have a 28 per cent higher sustained data transfer rate than their predecessors. This says increased areal density.

The increased density has another effect, higher capacity. The parts are available at 147, 300 and 450GB, a new record for SAS. Combine this with a blistering 164Gbps transfer rate and you have some lustworthy storage. Expect them to ship in Q1/08 for a lot of money.

Seagate is calling the encrypting 1TB drive the Barracuda FDE, and it uses the same encryption as it talked about earlier, but now it is a 3.5-inch desktop product. On one hand I like this idea a lot, on the other, I know it is going to be abused by the content mafia, and will undoubtedly be used more against the user than for them. DRM is evil kiddies, DRM in hardware is far worse.

The last one is the Momentus 5400.4, a 250G 2.5 inch notebook HD. Not much to say here other than Seagate is now a member of the 250G club.

The Barracuda FDE will ship sometime next year, the 5400.4 will ship in Q4. Like the 15k.6, neither had a price tag attached, but they should be significantly cheaper than the SAS models. Come to think of it, I would not mind having four of each. µ