[CentOS] Dell 120 GB 5400 RPM Encrypted Serial ATA Hard Drive

Rob Kampen wrote:

> Excuse a really dumb question, how does this provide me with security?
> I assume it still uses the normal SATA interface and thus the OS writes
> to the drive as normal, but now it is encrypted onto the physical
> media..... so now I steal the laptop, or just the physical drive, plug
> it into my SATA controller and voila read all the encrypted data off the
> drive???
> I am obviously missing something - there must be a key somewhere off the
> drive for this to work as a securely encrypted system.

Never used it myself but from the PDF
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/marketing/po_momentus_5400_fde.3.pdf

Consumers can easily integrate this drive and use their BIOS
password to set up authentication. They get easy, strong encryption
with no performance impact.

--

So it sounds like your prompted for the password when you boot
the system, probably during POST somehow. Maybe it only works on
special modern versions of BIOSs.

nate