Hitachi is the latest company to join the full-disc encryption (FDE) notebook HDD craze, introducing the Travelstar 5K5500.B mobile hard drive.

Hitachi's announcement comes just one day after Seagate launched its Momentus FDE laptop HDD, with data storage capacities up to 320GB.  A 500GB model is in the works, and will be released at a later date.

Rather than dabble with smaller storage sizes, Hitachi went straight for a half-terabyte design, with an emphasis on being eco-friendly along with secured with data encryption.  The 5,400-rpm drive has 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and uses just 1.4 watts when writing data.

"As interest grows, customers are asking us for hard drivese that require less power, provide more data security, have great performance and are environmentally friendly," said Brendan Collins, Hitachi Product Marketing VP.  "Hitachi Travelstar drives meet all of these customer demands and more, which is precisely why they continue to be the most popular 2.5-inch hard drives on the market today."

Hitachi plans to ship the Travelstar 5K5500.B in the first quarter of 2009.

Data encryption is becoming increasingly important as more laptops with sensitive information are compromised due to theft.  Analysts expect manufacturers, who often have provided encryption software that many consumers ignored, to become a major selling point for future products.

Expect every major HDD manufacturer to release self-encrypting HDDs, with OEMs picking up the drives for their future laptop products.