Toshiba's New HDDs Destroy Data Automatically

By Douglas Perry
published

Toshiba announced a series of self-encrypting hard drives that can actually wipe the data stored on them when they are connected to "an unknown host system."

Toshiba said that the drives are designed for use in PCs, printers, POS systems especially in government, financial and medical application fields.

The MK-61GSYG series of drives are based on the Opal specification of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) to store and encrypt data and adds a "data wiping technology." Users can configure the data "invalidation" ranges to destroy the data by command, on power cycle or a host authentication error. According to Toshiba, the drive provides users and administrators an option to simply deny access to data following a failed user authentication or "crypto-erase" sensitive user data.

The drives will be sampling during the second quarter of this year and will be available with capacities of 160, 250, 320, 500 and 640 GB. All drives integrate a SATA 3 Gbps interface and rotate their platters at a speed of 7200 RPM. Toshiba did not announce prices for the new drives.

Douglas Perry
29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sabot00
    This would be useful for laptops that need to be super-secure.
    Reply
  • wickedsnow
    Agreed, for laptops or government office's.
    Reply
  • milktea
    If someone needs to take sensitive data from a government HDD, I doubt that they would simply connect it to any computer (which then crypto-erase). They would probably take the platters out and do a manual data extraction. :)
    Reply
  • applegetsmelaid
    This would be great for those that don't want someone else seeing their data ;)
    Reply
  • groveborn
    No, they usually take the whole system, or just copy the files from withing the system. If they can't do that, then they'll take the harddrives. If they KNOW they will auto-erase, then maybe they'd consider taking out the platters.

    Then again...why would the government need to hide data?
    Reply
  • devon64327
    To be honest I can't see much use in this. If someone really needed that data they could take the entire system, extract the plater itself or probably just circumvent the wiping process. I find myself skeptical that Toshiba has built a bulletproof method
    Reply
  • rmmil978
    My old hard drive did this all the time...wait a minute...that wasn't a feature..
    Reply
  • alidan
    id rather the drives self encrypt to 2024bit if you don't use a special key. it allows the user to be able to get the data back, without them being realistically able to peak inside.
    Reply
  • K2N hater
    It's a lot easier to reach confidential files through OS exploits than disassembling a disk. Actually sensitive files are much more likely to be stored on a redundant file server instead because... For the case some HDD with that sort of protection dies one is to pay perhaps $25000 for the files to be recovered and the contents may eventually be leaked by the data recovery company.
    Reply
  • dalethepcman
    Others have stated some of the flaws in this already. This is just another marketing Gimmick. Once someone has unfiltered physical access to your machine, everything on it is theirs for the taking.

    Its difficult enough to keep a hacker from accessing things on an internet connected PC, its impossible if you give the PC to the hacker.
    Reply