Information on Intel 520 SSD drives and encryption

[idata]

Hi there everyone.

I have some questions about the encryption on the 520 models. I have tried to find this out via the usual Google/search channels but information on the encryption seems very hard to find (I can't even find a user guide for these drives?). We are currently using HP Elitebook 8440p's with standard drives on Win 7 64 bit. Mostly for dev work, so we do a fair bit of disk crunching. So a move to SSD would be great. We also currently use Bitlocker with a TPM boot password for encryption. My main interest with the 520 was with the built in encryption, which would allow us to not need bitlocker anymore (right?) as I have read that software based full disk encryption will kill quite a bit of the speed adavantage from an SSD, as well as pretty much nullifying wear levelling algorithms. The questions I need answered (before I can get management to pay out for one) are: - Can you move the disk to another workstation and still be able to read it in the event of a laptop hardware failure? With bitlocker and TPM you would just need to enter the key manually to gain access. Is it a similar situation with the built in encryption on a 520?- What exactly is the BIOS requirement for the encryption (I believe it requires a BIOS password of some kind?). There is a 'drivelock' option in the BIOS, is that it? FYI theres no high level security requriements for us, its not government or defence work or anything like that. Its just a 'belt and braces' type approach for carrying a works laptop around. Thanks for any help. I apologise if this information is available elsewhere, but I really can't seem to find it.

[idata]

Apologies for the mess of the text. I did format it niceley before posting but that seems to have been un-done by the forum software :S

[idata]

Actually, as usual, after I post a question, the answer is found. for reference theres a big thread about this subject on the 320 here:

/thread/20537?start=0&tstart=0 http://communities.intel.com/thread/20537?start=0&tstart=0

which I assume means most of it relates to the 520 (you need to get a few pages in to get to the detail)