I have recently purchased a western digital external 250gb hard drive(usb&firewire;). Is there a way(hardware or software) i can protect the data from unauthorized access..

You could try out this software… I probably will once I get an external HD.

Safehouse Hard Drive Encryption v2.10

thanks..will give it a try.

How do you want to protect it? Local access or network access?

Erik

ideally both. but i was thinking of protecting it locally. is there anything to prevent someone from accessing the files just by connecting it to their computer??  thanks

Honestly unless you encrypt the whole drive nothing can stop somebody from just popping in a Linux Live-On-CD (this is a distrobution of Linux and loads into RAM so nothing has to be physically installed.  All that’s needed is a CD-ROM drive) and looking at everything you’ve got (yes since Linux doesn’t understand Window’s security setup it is completly bipassed and everything is accessable).  The problem is it’s almost impossible to encypt an entire harddrive.  On the other hand you can encrypt certain files and folder.

Here is a massive article on how encryption works and how to do it in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003…

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/cryptfs.mspx

thanks for the link..i know nothing is impossible. i just want it to make it a little tougher for them than just pluggin it into their computer and pops up as a removeable drive. the chances of someone comming into my apartment with a linux live-on-cd to access my data should be pretty slim.. :ph34r: