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Toshiba unveils auto-wipe hard drives

bsnk

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 10 Aug 2010 at 10:20

Nervous administrators worried about data leakage have a new tool in their arsenal following the launch of Toshiba's Wipe technology.

Wipe instantly clears the data from drives by invalidating the security key when the power supply is turned off or the HDD is removed from the system.

Lost or stolen notebooks are not the only security risk that IT departments must address

Such a feature could be used to prevent data from being stolen off of printer or copier drives or from returned leased systems, Toshiba said.

"Lost or stolen notebooks are not the only security risk that IT departments must address," the company said.

"Today, most office copier and printing systems use HDDs and many organisations are now realising the critical importance of maintaining the security of document image data stored within copier and printer systems."

Set to be rolled out in the company's self-encrypting hard drives, Toshiba said Wipe would first arrive in its upcoming 2.5" 7200rpm SED HDD model, and should address a growing need for IT departments to comply with privacy and data protection law.

However, it is unclear at this stage how any facility for recovering data mistakenly locked might work.

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User comments

When it's gone it's gone!

"However, it is unclear at this stage how any facility for recovering data mistakenly locked might work."
Having a recovery system for intentionally deleted data could NEVER be a good idea!

By milliganp on 10 Aug 2010

The trouble is, it won't be deliberate.

99% of data loss under this system will be accidental, especially if it invalidates the key if the laptop battery is changed...

By derek_c on 12 Aug 2010

Lloegyr

5 weeks ago I bought a new laptop (Toshiba). As I also have a sata duplicate drive base my first step was to remove the hard disc insert into the cloner and duplicate it. OOPS from now on no more data at all. Yes I did do it like that as I wanted a completely clean copy for the future. Normally I would use a clone software, in future one would have to! Good idea but lots of pitfalls.

By Lloegyr on 12 Aug 2010

Take Responsibility

Milliganp is right. If someone who should have a key can unlock it, then it is inevitable that someone who should not have that key will also have it.


Sure, it's a pain - so make damn sure you have data backed up properly before you attempt anything like that could trigger the lock. It won't take too many mistakes for people to learn.

By Klobba on 12 Aug 2010

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