Is there anyone using hardware encrypted HDD on their laptops?

Question

Some laptop manufacturers are providing support for hardware encrypted disk drivers. One of them is Lenovo.

Using a drive that supports this encryption is much better than using software encryption solutions because it does not limit the range of OS to choose from and more important is not slowing down your computer. Details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_disk_encryption

Example products: * ThinkPad 200GB Security (FDE) 7200 rpm Serial ATA Hard Drive * Seagate ST9160824AS, Seagate 160GB ST9160414ASG, Seagate 160GB ST9160414AS, Seagate 320GB ST9320424AS,* Seagate 320GB ST9320424ASG * Hitachi part numbers supporting BDE (the same thing as FDE) http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/bulk_faqs.htm

What is worse is that I tried at several retailer to order one of them but nobody was able to deliver me one. One of them received the order, get the money and after more than one week I received an email telling me that the product is not available and they refunded me.

More than one month ago I used the contact form all these manufacturers to ask them about these HDD products - still no answer. I wonder if these are virtual products ;)

The question is: do you use one of them? where could I order one?

Answer 1

I would rather use software encryption as from what I hear, the hardware contains a mechanism to recover the data without the key.

Answer 2

I just tried to search for those:

http://geizhals.at/deutschland/?cat=hd2s7&sort=artikel&bpmax=&asuch=seagate+fde&v=e&pixonoff=on&filter=+Liste+aktualisieren+&xf=958_500

Here in Germany they are not available and actually just appeared (weren't there a week ago). Knowing Seagate, it may well take them a year or more to actually ship the drives.

The other "special" series of laptop drives like 24x7 versions of mass models are also not available:

http://geizhals.at/deutschland/?cat=hd2s7&sort=artikel&bpmax=&asuch=hitachi+e5k&v=e&pixonoff=on&filter=+Liste+aktualisieren+&xf=957_Hitachi

http://geizhals.at/deutschland/?cat=hd2s7&sort=artikel&bpmax=&asuch=hitachi+e7k&v=e&pixonoff=on&filter=+Liste+aktualisieren+&xf=957_Hitachi

From that I conclude there is no real demand for those drives, which is why nobody is selling them.