Seagate Intros Maxtor BlackArmor, First External Drive with Full Disk Encryption

by Xavier on January 6, 2008

Seagate introduced the Maxtor BlackArmor external hard drive, which is the world’s first external drive with full disk encryption. Seagate claims it can take up to 30 years to crack the encryption, depending on the strength of your password.

“There is no backdoor to this device. It’s virtually impervious to other people accessing it,” said John Lumb, Seagate’s Senior Director for Product Line Management. “Changing the password makes it unreadable, if a burglar bags this thing they can use it as a paper weight.”

A 160GB version of the BlackArmor will be available the second quarter of the year for $150.

“Over time your probably going to see FDE become a standard part of devices,” Lumb said.

Maxtor BlackArmor

Tags: CES 2008, drives

Comments

marcus

Yes I agree with Ben, companies like Lacie have been doing this type of thing for a while & also their is a key thumb drive that also works on the same encription, it actually destroys itself which is even cooler, Bond style!

ben

This press release/story is just wrong; somebody misquoted something along the way. I have no idea if it was the "first", but I've been happily using the Flagstone Freedom for years. ( http://www.stonewood.co.uk/flagstone_freedom.as... ) It was terribly expensive and I'm glad to see Seagate introducing an equivalent (I guess) product at a much lower price point. But let's be fair; Seagate was NOT first.