Recently, a few SSD models have been introduced that support Full-Disk Encryption per the TCG Opal standard. Many older SSDs already support AES encryption and use the ATA password for this, which is settable in the BIOS. The advantage of Opal is that it divides the drive into a small read-only segment (technically not a partition) with a special boot loader (which prompts you for the encryption password and passes it to the drive) and the encrypted segment which contains your traditional OS and data partitions. These special boot loaders can do much more than a BIOS: for example, they can provide means for key reset and they can talk to a server on the network. They can also have multiple passwords for multiple users and they can be configured entirely from within the OS, which also allows for central management in enterprise environments.
The downside of course is that you need a piece of software to use Opal. This includes WinMagic SecureDoc (for Windows and Mac), Wave Systems Embassy Security Center (for Windows only) and several others, but also BitLocker/eDrive in Windows 8 (however, this requires IEEE-1667 support as well). This is also an advantage as it does not require hardware or OS support; so even Macs could use them (WinMagic SecureDoc already supports supported Macs until October 2013, a version for OS X 10.9 was never released).
Probably the first drive to support Opal was the Seagate Momentus FDE, which was a spinning disk. Toshiba, Hitachi and a few others also made HDDs with Opal support.
Later, the Samsung PM830 (but not the Samsung SSD 830) and the Micron C400 SED (but not the Micron C400 or the Crucial m4) came, which were only available to OEM.
The first Opal-compliant mass-market SSD was the Crucial M500 (it’s also OEM’d as Micron M500), which is also IEEE-1667 compliant. As the M500 currently offers the best GB/$ ratio of all SSDs on the market, it’s been selling superb in the five months it’s been on the market and I hope this drives more software companies to support Opal.
The just-announced Intel SSD Pro 1500 will also support Opal, but apparently not IEEE-1667.
As far as I know, these really are all TCG Opal drives on the market, currently and previously. I expect there will be more coming, but I am kind of surprised that it took this long.
If you know of any others, let me know in the comments.
Update Dec 2013: The Samsung 840 EVO also does Opal.
Update Jan 2014: Wave Systems has a list of Opal drives that work with their software. It lists some Adata XPG SX900 models, the Kingston KC300 (only certain part numbers) and some LiteOn models.
Update Mar 2014: The just-announced Crucial M550, which is very similar to the popular M500, still supports Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667, and is explicitly advertised as Microsoft eDrive compatible. Same goes for the almost identical ADATA SP920.
Update May 2014: The SanDisk X300s also has both. Glad to see that Opal and IEEE-1667 are finally making it into a significant proportion of new midrange mass-market SSD models.
Update June 2014: The Crucial MX100 is similar to the M550 with cheaper NAND and supports the same encryption standards. The ADATA Premier SP610 is supposed to get Opal 2.0 through a firmware update later this year, but not IEEE-1667.
Update July 2014: The Samsung SSD 850 Pro has TCG Opal and IEEE-1667. The Intel SSD Pro 2500 has TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667.
