Patent 10133681 was granted and assigned to Seagate Technology on November, 2018 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Systems and methods for using encryption keys to manage data retention are described. In one embodiment, the systems and methods may include receiving data such as user data from a host of the storage drive, encrypting the data using an encryption key, writing the encrypted data to the storage drive, and retaining the encrypted data on the storage drive based at least in part on a validity of the encryption key.