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