Notebook or laptop PCs are carried everywhere. They can be lost or stolen, often with confidential information inside. This is an issue for both personal notebooks and corporate or business notebooks. Some type of password protection or encryption is necessary to protect the contents of the hard disk drive (HDD).

What is Full Disk Encryption?

Full Disk Encryption (FDE) or Whole Disk Encryption protects data by encrypting everything on the disk, including the operating system (boot partition). Some encryption software does not encrypt the operating system, possibly opening loopholes for attackers to break the encryption.

This article looks at hardware encryption, built into the hard disk. It does not cover software solutions such as Windows BitLocker.