According to a press release any disk that uses the specification will be locked without a password and and the password will be needed even before a computer boots. Three The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) specifications cover storage devices in consumer laptops and desktop computers as well as enterprise-class drives used in servers and disk storage arrays.
When a USB drive is unplugged, or when a laptop is powered down, or when an administrator pulls a drive from a server, it can't be brought back up and read without first giving a cryptographically-strong password. Without it the drive is a brick that could not even be formatted and flogged on ebay.
HDD makers agree on full-disk encryption standard
Posted on Thursday, January 29 2009 @ 2:40 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
FUD Zilla writes the six largest HDD makers have published the final specifications for a single, full-disk encryption standard that can be used across all HDDs, SSDs and encryption key management applications.