Security protect an external hard drive from prying eyes.

I want to be able to put files into an external hard drives and have the drive password protected so that to see anything in it a password must be used. Otherwise it wold be impossible to access the drive at all, from any computer.

Can this be done? If so, how?

It's done all the time. External hard drives can be encrypted and password locked, or some can even be locked from their firmware (government specs). Some drive manufacturers such as LaCie offer what they call secure drives. Do some searching with Google to see which method you prefer.

However, (and this is just my opinion) unless you're dealing with very sensitive data which must be protected, encrypting or secure locking hard drives can be more of a problem and headache than what it's worth.

The best method in my opinion is to use hard drive carriers that allow the drives to be removed and stored for safe keeping away from unauthorized access.

"some can even be locked from their firmware (government specs)"

What do you mean by this? If it's government spec then it's likely the best method, right?

After searching around yesterday, I found I can create a password protected disk image of the info on the disk and then erase the original copy, keeping only the protected disk image. If I do this in an external hard drive, this should work fine. But, do you think the alternate method of using the firmware better?

The drive is for storage, no so much a working drive. The hassle of having to access it often and having to punch a password in all the time will be non-existent. I will only have to access the drive every once in a while to store stuff, and rarely. The idea is that the information in it is for my own use and even in the case that I pass away, for example, the information is not longer needed and any access attempt to it should be futile and the disk to be destroyed.

After searching around yesterday, I found I can create a password protected disk image of the info on the disk and then erase the original copy, keeping only the protected disk image. If I do this in an external hard drive, this should work fine. But, do you think the alternate method of using the firmware better?

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Locking a drive from its firmware is the best method to use, however, noting your usage, I would say go with the password protected disk image.

Drives which allow firmware locking are also going to be more expensive and are proprietary. I mentioned LaCie in my first post - you might want to take a browse around their site and look at what they have to offer.