Patent ID: 7003674

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: (a) a disk for storing data including embedded servo sectors comprising servo bursts, the disk comprising a public area for storing plaintext data and a pristine area for storing encrypted data; (b) a head for reading the encrypted data from the pristine area of the disk; (c) a control system for interfacing with a host computer to facilitate read and write commands to write data to and read data from the pristine area of the disk, the control system comprising: authentication circuitry for authenticating a request received from the host computer to access the pristine area of the disk; a secret drive key; decryption circuitry, responsive to the secret drive key, for decrypting the encrypted data stored in the pristine area of the disk to generate decrypted data; and a servo control system responsive to the embedded servo sectors: wherein: the servo bursts are written to the disk in encrypted form; and the authentication circuitry enables the servo control system to decrypt the servo bursts.