Patent ID: 8363837

Claim:
A method of operating a disk drive comprising the steps of: receiving, from a host device on a communication bus, a write command for a write operation with encryption, an encryption key and data to be encrypted and written to disk storage, the write command including a unique identifier; encrypting the data, recording the data in disk drive storage, and recording the encryption key and the unique identifier in association with the data; and processing a read command received from the host device for the data, the read command including the unique identifier and a decryption key by comparing the decryption key with the encryption key, refusing to decrypt the data if the decryption key and the encryption key are not equal, and sending no response when the decryption key and the encryption key are not equal to hamper a brute force attempt to guess the decryption key, and otherwise, retrieving the data from disk drive storage, decrypting the data and sending the data to the host device.