Organizations are finally catching on to the benefits of Full Disk Encryption, known in other circles as Self Encrypting Drives (SED). The Opal standard, now supported by some major hard disk manufacturers such as Seagate, Toshiba and others, offers an industry standard encryption technology that safeguards sensitive information.
InformationWeek wrote a piece related to this subject that is a worthwhile read... download the PDF of the story here.
Since the appearance of this article, CMS Products has developed external Opal compliant drives providing safe transport of large volumes of sensitive data. Certain versions of these drives are compatible with management consoles of the various manufacturers (such as Wave Systems and WinMagic).