The groundbreaking 2.5 inch Momentus 5400 FDE.2 (full disk encryption) has had a long and winding gestation, but is now set to be put on sale at the end of March in a real laptop, ASI’s C8015 , costing $2,150 (£1,100).

As well as on-the-fly encryption integrated into the drive itself using chip acceleration, the laptop also features a trusted platform module (TPM), and fingerprint reader, security add-ons that have added roughly 20 percent to the cost of what is otherwise a mainstream Intel Core 2 Duo laptop.

The drive to ship in the ASI machine will be the 80GB version, but 100Gb, 120Gb and 160Gb versions are also waiting in the wings, all based on a 3Gb/sec SATA interface and spinning at 5400 RPM.