I'm doing some research on a laptop i will buy and use for work purposes.

To keep it short and to the point, I'm looking at Dell...and they offer a "250GB 7200rpm FIPS Encrypted Hard Drive." for storage.

Now obviously, the price of this encrypted hard drive is about $100 more than a non-encrypted HD of the same capacity.

I can just as easily buy a non-encrypted hard drive, load TrueCrypt on it...full disk encryption...and it's free.

Wouldn't Truecrypt serve the same purpose as this FIPS encrypted HD..of course without me spending a dime on encryption?

Thanks

Knb

TrueCrypt is a possible solution, albeit a software one.  One of the biggest drawbacks of software encryption such as Truecrypt is the performance or speed of encrypting and decrypting data.  It's slow!

Hardware encryption results in realtime high performance encryption without noticeable performance degradation.  For hardward based you would consider and SED drive like the Segate momentus drive, or an external drive such as a DataLocker.  I think www.datalockerdrive.com.  Both options are FIPS validated solutions.

In general software solutions have proven to be cumbersome, so finding a good hardware solution to your problem is advised.

My /home is encrypted with Truecrypt on my daily machine (Ubuntu / BT5) and neither login or normal usage is slowed one bit. Takes an extra second or 2 to enter extra passwords at login (1 to decrypt)and (1 to mount /home after it's decrypted) but that's it. Works like a champ.

I agree with smunro.  If you're running Windows, I'd use BitLocker.  I remember reading that BitLocker is about 15% faster than TrueCrypt anyway.  Although, if you're running Linux, TrueCrypt is more flexible.  It originated on a non-windows platform. With this you can also use decoys and encrypt hidden partitions/OS's. TrueCrypt encryption can always be rolled back (just don't forget your passphrase!) so you can always give it a shot and see.