Fujitsu offers multiple flavors of 2.5 inch SATA drives, each brand with its individual features and characteristics. Some of the drives offered include:

- The MHZ2 CJ Series, targeted to notebook/laptop deployments and served in capacities of 80 to 320 GB.

The key feature of the CJ drives is their support for built-in FDE (Full Disk Encryption), where the whole contents of the drive are encrypted/decrypted automatically via on-board hardware. The vendor states that the necessary key for the encryption of the data remains in the drive itself after boot up, and is regenerated when the correct password is received at system startup (and is therefore unattainable when the system is powered off). In brief, the password is requested by the BIOS before the OS boots up, which is then transferred to the drive using the ATA security command set. After OS boot, the password is no longer in system memory; and the vendor further notes that it's not possible to access the disk drive's CPU memory via the SATA interface and the drive firmware cannot be changed without cryptographic authentication. The encryption itself is 256-bit AES. Because the encryption/decryption itself takes place within the drive, the vendor notes that there is no impact to overall system performance.

Related to the drive's encryption capabilities is a Secure Erase feature, which enables the full contents of the drive to be made immediately inaccessible by changing the in-drive encryption key.

The drives themselves are SATA drives with a 3.0 Gb/sec interface and spin at 7200 RPM. Offered in capacities ranging from 80 to 320 GB, average seek times are 10.5 ms/12.5 ms (read/write), with a maximum seek time listed at 20.5 ms. A 16 MB buffer and 3 year limited warranty rounds out the drive's feature set.

- The MHZ2-BK (7200 RPM) and MHZ2-BS (5400 RPM) drives support extended duty cycles for deployment in continuous (24-hour non-stop) operation scenarios. Capacities range up to 250 GB, and interfaces are 3.0 Gb/sec or 1.5 Gb/sec.

The vendor states that the BK series drives are targeted for use in blade servers, nearline storage, telecommunication, etc; while the BS series drives (and their slower platter speed) focus on industrial applications such as surveillance cameras, PCs, ATMs, etc. Other features touted by the vendor include low power consumption (BS drives feature 1 Amp at spin up and 1.9/2.1 Watts for typical read/writes; while the BK drives use 1.1 Amps at spinup and 2.1/2.3 Watts for read/writes), and support for RV (rotational vibration) compensation technology.

- The latest in the product line are the MJA2 BH and MJA2 CH drives, both 5400 RPM drives with capacities ranging to 500 GB and boasting 3.0 Gb/sec SATA interfaces. The vendor states that the MJA2 drives are their first to be classified as "halogen-free," and provide a read/write power consumption of 1.4W. The MJA2 CH drives add support for full-disk encryption (FDE), see the description for the MHZ2 CJ series above for more details.

The new drives are expected to be available 1Q/2009.

Visit the vendor's Web site for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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