hardware full disk encryption

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

I've got a standard consumer Intel 520 SSD, which claims to do hardware
based AES disk encryption with no speed penalty.  It sounds like a
useful way to protect laptop data if the laptop is ever stolen.  Has
anyone tried to do hardware-based full disk encryption with Fedora?
Does one need to boot from a live usb or something in order to get to an
environment where one can even enter the AES key for the disk
decryption?  

Google is failing me here due to search spam for LUKS which doesn't
appear to be capable of *full* *disk* encryption.  It only seems to
encrypt individual partitions.

-wolfgang