About encrypted HD option in a E6400 notebook

Hi,

I'm going to buy a Dell Latitude E6400 to replace my old TP T42.
I only have a doubt about what HD option to choose. I'm pretty interested in having a encrypted hard disk option (80GB 5400rpm Encrypted Hard Drive) but I don't really know how does it work. On my thinkpad notebook you can choose if you want the hard drive protected with a master password or not. You configure this in the BIOS.

Could anyone say me if on the Dell Latitude E Series notebooks it works in the same way? Or maybe the disk is encrypted by a windows software or anything? I'm worried about this because I'm going to use more than one OS in the notebook and if I'm going to pay for a encrypted hard drive I want it to be OS independent. Where do you configure this feature? Also in the BIOS or maybe in a hard drive controller?
If the encrypted hard drive is more expensive than other options, I suppose that if I one day I change the disk for another, this one must has encrypted data support? I can't simply change it for any kind of notebook HD?

Thank you very much for any help.

 

I had this hard drive ordered on one of our company's E6400s and to be honest with you, I wouldn't order it again if I had the option. I called Dell technical support to figure out how this works and I found out that the encryption password can only be changed using Dell's Control Point. There is no option in BIOS to change it. The worst thing is that I did a fresh install of Windows XP and they told me there's no way to change or disable it with a new install of Windows XP. They said the only option I had was to install Vista. Maybe the technician I talked to didn't know what he was talking about but this doesn't sound like a very good solution. They sent me a new hard drive and I decided to use TrueCrypt instead.

 

mine one is 160GB 7200rpm FSS HD
both the BIOS and ControlPoint/Embassy allow me to set HD password, but I never tried to use.