Can I password protect an external hard drive? Mac OS Question

Factual Questions
1

I use a 40 gig Smartdisk FireLite firewire drive for backup. I take it with me when I travel, it is both a backup for the laptop and a way to keep documents nearby without having to store them on both home and laptop machines.

Some of these documents are… sensitive. Proprietary information and drawings, private pricing, etc.

I used Mac Help and couldn’t find out a way to password the entire external Hard Drive. Going to System Preferences- Security only addressed the Home hard drive and Home Icon.

Is there a way? I cannot believe I have to password protect every single document I wish to keep private, one at a time.

My thanks in advance,

Cartooniverse

2

Open up Disk Utility and create an encrypted drive image.

http://www.edb.utexas.edu/help/tutorials/security/osx_encrypted_image.htm

Also - note that ‘password protection’ in most programs is trivial to defeat. If you want any real security, encryption is necessary.