When you're talking hard drives, a couple of things really matter: size, reliability, and security. When you're in the enterprise, security matters more than most, and Toshiba understands that. The company has just revealed a new self-encrypting drive that's designed to Trusted Computing Group's "Oval" specification.

The drive will have a 2.5" form factor and will spin at 7200RPM, and it'll have government-grade AES-256 hardware encryption. As stated, the unit will be based on the Opal Security Subsystem Class (Opal SSC) specification from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), with the new Toshiba SED able to offer secure and quick deployment of encryption on notebook and desktop PCs to protect confidential information. 


SEDs designed to the Opal SSC specification provide advanced access authentication and built-in hardware data encryption.  Because it is an open industry standard, Opal encourages broad support from both security solutions vendors and SED makers – enabling seamless management of most deployments that support both pre-existing software encryption and Opal SSC-specified SED storage.  SEDs designed to the Opal specification help organizations easily and cost-effectively protect data from theft or unauthorized access, while easing the administrative burdens associated with re-purposing, or retiring client systems and data storage.

The MKxx61GSYD is the newest addition to the Toshiba family of drives designed for commercial notebooks and security-sensitive applications, including shared desktop PCs, and the hardware encryption built-into the MKxx61GSYD allows full storage I/O speeds, ensuring that users will experience no reduction in application performance due to background encryption processes. It will be available in 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 640GB and offer a 12ms average seek time, 16MB buffer and a SATA 3Gbps interface. No mention of a price, though.