How to password protect/secure external HD in OSX? Changes in Lion?

[miamialley]

What's the best way to protect/secure my external HD with OS X? My external HD came with the usual software which password protects the drive, but how secure is that and is there a way to simply do it in OSX that is [more] secure?

What will formatting the drive in the journaled, encrypted format do? I was reading that maybe there are changes to what can be done in Lion.

 

[nelz886]

Protect a disk with a password
You can protect an external disk or thumb drive with a password, so when you connect the disk to your computer, you must enter the password before you can access its files.

To protect the disk, you must erase it first. If the disk has any files you want to save, be sure to copy them to another disk.

Avoid encrypting disks used by a Mac server. If a disk with service data is encrypted, the server can’t restart until you go to the server and enter the password at the server’s keyboard. If a shared disk is encrypted, the disk isn’t available to users until you enter the password at the server’s keyboard.

Open Disk Utility, in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
Open Disk Utility

Connect the disk to your computer.
Select the disk and click Erase.
Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)” from the Format pop-up menu.
If you don’t see that option, you may have selected a partition and not a disk in the list at the left. In the list, make sure you selected a disk that’s to the far left and not a partition that’s indented to the right under a disk.

Type a name for the disk.
If you want to prevent the erased files from being recovered, click Security Options, use the slider to choose how many times to write over the erased data, and click OK.
Click Erase.
Enter a password when prompted.

 

[miamialley]

Protect a disk with a password
You can protect an external disk or thumb drive with a password, so when you connect the disk to your computer, you must enter the password before you can access its files.

To protect the disk, you must erase it first. If the disk has any files you want to save, be sure to copy them to another disk.

Avoid encrypting disks used by a Mac server. If a disk with service data is encrypted, the server can’t restart until you go to the server and enter the password at the server’s keyboard. If a shared disk is encrypted, the disk isn’t available to users until you enter the password at the server’s keyboard.

Open Disk Utility, in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
Open Disk Utility

Connect the disk to your computer.
Select the disk and click Erase.
Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)” from the Format pop-up menu.
If you don’t see that option, you may have selected a partition and not a disk in the list at the left. In the list, make sure you selected a disk that’s to the far left and not a partition that’s indented to the right under a disk.

Type a name for the disk.
If you want to prevent the erased files from being recovered, click Security Options, use the slider to choose how many times to write over the erased data, and click OK.
Click Erase.
Enter a password when prompted.

So after it is erased/formatted, it will prompt me to enter a password, then that password will be used to protect all files on the drive?