BitLocker vs. Hardware-Based Encryption

[spoon805]

I'm about to purchase a new laptop and am debating where to put my dollars to work in terms of encrypting my data. I'd love to get the community's thoughts on BitLocker vs. Hardware-Based Encryption...

The choices have come down to:

1) Vista Ultimate w/ BitLocker enabled on a 5400 RPM 320 GB HDD
or...
2) Vista Business on a 7200 RPM 250 GB HDD w/ Hardware-Based Encryption

Regarding the "Hardware-Based Encryption", I believe the OEM drive coming on the Lenovo x200s I'm consider is the Seagate Momentus 7200 FDE Hard Drive.

I suspect the answer is obvious (i.e., go w/ hardware-based encryption), but thought I'd risk looking dumb just in case I'm overlooking any nuances.

Thanks in advance everyone.

 

[Nothinman]

I'd personally go with software-based encryption (I use dmcrypt on Linux at home) because it's more portable and I don't want to put my trust in whatever blackbox Seagate is using for encryption.

 

[elconejito]

I use truecrypt on my laptop. open-source, it's pretty quick. Gives options such as encrypting files, folders, partitions, hidden partitions, whole drives, etc. I'd imagine hardware based is faster. Never used hardware so I can't do a direct comparison.

 

[Modelworks]

Hard drive based encryption is interesting because of how it works. The first level is password protection of the drive. If you put the drive into another pc some of them will not even spin up without the password.

The second level encrypts the file based on a stored key inside the firmware. The firmware on these drives is stored in two places. One is on the platter that the drive uses to boot up and the other is stored in a eprom chip on the board. The drive boots off the platter firmware then loads the eprom data to use the key. The key is never revealed to the system. The eprom chip on the board is otp or one time programmable and set with the lock bit, meaning that once the key is programmed, nobody , not even seagate can get the key back. It has no overhead on the drives performance because all the drive is doing is instead of passing the data through in a 1 to 1 location like normal, it passes it through a very simple but effective algorithm based on the key in the eprom . No two drives have the same write pattern so it is really hard to crack.

 

[VirtualLarry]

link

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
link

Doesn't work with hardware encryption chips. Unlocking the drives password has been around for years.