Seagate Technology has carried the notebooks data security one step further by announcing that it will start offering its hard drives with built-in encryption in the first month of 2007.

Meant for the notebook PCs, the new Momentus 5400 FDE.2 (aka tha Full Disk Encryption 2) will come integrating a special encryption chip that will keep a check on the data security. It would not be possible for anyone to read the data from the disk and boot up the system without the required authentication.

The 2.5 inch 5400 rpm hard drive will come in the storage capacity of 80GB, 120GB, or 160GB. While the users can personalize the password for data access, it might be possible that notebook vendors will come out with other techniques like fingerprint and smart card readers.

The notebooks stuffed with hard drives featuring data encryption will start shipping shortly after Seagate makes available these special hard drives in January.

Via: PCworld