What is the best way to secure data on an external drive

[SteveDC]

My Thinkpad is always with me, but on trips I leave my Maxtor backup drives at my office and home.

Is there a practical way, through software, to secure these drives? Is there some software lock for the drive, or efficient encryption technique?

Thank you for considering my questions.

[GomJabbar]

You could use the ThinkVantage Client Security Software for this. This software is not for the faint-hearted however.

If you use Rescue and Recovery, you can password protect the backups. Other backup software (such as StompSoft Backup MyPC) offers this option as well.

I believe you can apply a Hard Drive Password through the BIOS. I know you can do this with the internal drive, but I am not really sure about an external drive.

[aw]

I use TrueCrypt for this purpose. Check it out.