Andy Cordial, the storage systems integration specialist's managing director, told Infosecurity that the drives – which will start at £249 for a 160GB version –  will be supplied as a kit that includes a USB/SATA data transfer cable and Acronis drive cloning software.

"Rather than supply the bare drive, the Enigma SEDs (self-encrypting drives) will come with all the cables and software needed to allow a laptop users to move their data from the old drive to a the new one, and install it very simply", he said.

"We think the kits we're launching are pretty unique and, along with the 160 GB unit, we've also got a 320 and 500 GB versions at, respectively, £269 and £299", he added.

According to Cordial, he has been talking to a number of SED suppliers for a while now, but the real key to the Enigma kits is the Winmagic encryption/decryption software that works with the SATA drive at the BIOS interface level and allows the data to be written or read in encrypted format on-the-fly.

"It allows us to offer what we think is a unique package in the marketplace and gives laptop users the ability to fully encrypt the data in the background - and decrypt it back when it is needed", he said.

Data writes and reads with the SED drives, he went on to say, are just as fast as with a regular drive and there is no data latency.

All three drives come in a 2.5 inch form factor and use 256-bit AES encryption.