Password protect data partition on macbook

Any advice here would be appreciated.

I'm currently reviewing my backup procedure at home and want to get rid of my RAID5 NAS box for a much simplier solution.

I have a early 2008 macbook that has a 500GB hard drive in it. I intend to re-install leopard and create 2 partitions.

1 x 100gb partition for the OS
1 x 400gb partition for DATA

Now i want to store all my personal photo's / home movies / Important documents on the data partition but if my laptop ever got stolen i wouldnt want anyone to have access to this data.

Q: is there any way of password protecting / encrypting the data partition and if there is will this slow the drive down?

I would then get 2 x 500GB USB hard drives (portable ones) and CCC the data from my data partition to these USB drives. I would use them in rotation so one the first week and the other the next.

One of the drives would be kept in the safe at my house and the other at the safe at my parents.

Does this seem feasable?

 

doesnt file vault only encrypt oyur home folder which would be on the OS partition??

 

Ok after having a little search around i think i may be able to get away with creating a password protected image.


I will want to back the data up to an external USB drive as mentioned. I don't however want to backup the .dmg image as i will want the data to be unprotected and to be able to be read from a Windows PC.

Can i mount the image on my macbook and then use ccc (or anything better if you have a suggestion) to make a mirrored copy of the data in the image to my external drive?

Also how should i format all these partitions?

HFS+
HFS
FAT32

????

Thanks, i'm somewhat of a mac noobie