Privacy protection for an external harddrive?

I bought a Western Digital external hard drive to backup files and also transport extra data with my laptop, which has a rather small HDD.
I always worry that it will get stolen, or I will lose it and somebody will easily have access to all the data.
Is there a way to password protect or encrypt the data on the drive?

I use Windows XP if this helps?

Thanks in advance.

 

I am leaning towards encrypting your drive with TrueCrypt. I have my USB thumb drive encrypted using the Traveller Disk option for portable drives.


http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php

With the Traveller Disk option you should be able to plug your external hd in and the password prompt should come up. More about Traveller Mode:

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=traveller-mode

 

I haven't tried the traveler mode option, but I do have a huge encrypted volume on my external hard drive. It is great! Make sure you don't lose your password though, because if you do, you are sh*t out of luck.

 

Sounds good, cheers guys. I will try it out later.

 

I just tried configuring that Traveller mode and I don't understand it properly.
I have managed to make a Traveller Disk on my external HDD and I can see the files, etc. but what do I do now? I did make a volume, but it didn't let me go over 4GB because it is FAT32. I chose the option to Auto-Mount truecrypt volume and chose the 4GB volume on my external HDD.
I then ejected the drive and plugged it back in again, but it did not ask for a password and still allowed me to access all files, etc.
What am I doing wrong?

 

I reformatted my external drive (as per the instructions) and I created a 400G volume on it. It's funny. It just looks like a little tiny file, hehe!.

I have not tried the traveler mode. But I have truecrypt on my USB stick along with cryptosuite and axcrypt and my xerobank VPN. So I can use truecrypt no matter where I go. And of course it just takes a second to download on any computer.