Hitachi, Fujitsu also announce self-encrypting hard drives

Just one day after Dell announced it would begin shipping a variety of its business laptops with Seagate self-encrypting drives, both Hitachi and Fujitsu are announcing their entry in that category as well with a couple of 2.5" laptop hard drives.

Hitachi’s offering is called the Travelstar 5K500.B and has 500GB of storage space while consuming only 1.4W during read/write operations. What makes the drive special, though, is the optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) system-on-a-chip technology, which encrypts data using a private 128-bit security key as it is written to the disk and reverses this as information is retrieved.

Meanwhile, Fujitsu is claiming the title of “world’s first” with its new MJA2 CH notebook drive – not for the size of the disk itself, but because it can handle 256-bit AES encryption. Likewise, the offering is a 2.5" drive that's 9.5mm thick and runs at 5,400 RPM with capacities of up to 500GB. Both the Hitachi and Fujitsu drives are also halogen-free to reduce pollution. The Travelstar 5K500.B will be shipping worldwide beginning next month in its various sizes, while the Fujitsu MJA2 CH is expected in the first quarter of 2009.