As part of the Cheetah family, the new Cheetah 15K.6 FDE hard drive now also encrypts data as well. And that encryption goes anywhere the hard drive goes – whether it is moved, stored, or retired.

Compared to other encryption technologies, self-encryption within the hard drive brings significant performance, management, and security benefits for users. Since the encryption engine is in the drive’s controller ASIC, encryption is transparently fast and performance automatically scales with every drive added to a data center. Because there is no performance cost associated with encrypting more data, there is no need to make fine-grained decisions as to what data to protect – which can eliminate the need for data classification. Self-encryption requires no change to the OS, applications, or databases. Instantaneous Key-Erase technology, a standard on all Seagate FDE hard drives, facilitates quick and secure removal, whether for repurposing, returning for service, or disposal.

Leading analysts, standards bodies, and major storage providers have closely evaluated and concluded that self-encrypting drives deliver critical benefits for data center information security.

Available in capacities of 450GB, 300GB, and 147GB, the Cheetah 15K.6 family includes Seagate PowerTrim technology which dynamically optimizes drive power consumption at all levels of activity. The Cheetah 15K.6 FDE family offers the highest 3.5-inch hard drive reliability in the industry at 1.6 million hours MTBF (0.55% AFR), a choice of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces, and a five-year limited warranty.