Try stealing one of these babies, and all you’ll have is a brick.
Smart anti theft device, BUT: don’t try to transfer it to another computer, even one you own (which to me is a major drawback). Because of this, I would think it’s best use will be in large companies and government where more than one user is probable. No more loss of huge, sensitive databases through misplacing a computer.
The usual erasing process rewrites data over the chosen area of the HDD. This Disk works differently. It does a crypto-erase (which nukes the encryption key). The data is in a 256 bit AES algorithm encryption unencrypted as you use it. Once it senses it’s not in the original machine, poof…. undecipherable data. That’s a total wipe. It can be done by sector or parts of the drive. Also can be configured to happen after N unsuccessful logins.
This is the same tech used in smartphones to perform remote wipes.
The drives will come in sizes up to 640GB.
Incidentally, the next version of OS X — 10.7 Lion — should have something similar (in the programming, not the HDD).
Source:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/toshibas-self-erasing-drive-wipes-itself-instantly