Can I use bitlocker on my external hard drive without having to use it on my local c drive? Or is there something else that I can use to secure a seperate drive without having to buy different software?Thanks,Terry

AWESOME!!! :) I right clicked my external HDD (WD 500 GB) and saw the bitlocker option. Jumped ahead and encrypted it! (Win 7 Ultimate). It went well and in the end I was able to get the file that had the recovery key in it. Everything went well, and I succeeded in encrypting my data. ~140GB That was 12 hours ago. Since then, I have been trying to read :) my data on that drive. Super critical, something I collected over last 5 years...and wola!! i just cant open it. Tried everything from recovery, to key combinations to key recovery tool. Managed to get an additional external dr to recover data (by reading (kb/928201). That dint work either, and I dont have a keypackage to try option2. Until now, when I read this post and it turns everything upside down. So, I actually encrypted my drive so that nobody, not even me, can read off it? What a horrible thing to do...and horrible piece of s/w to use. Please tell me that there is some way of recovering my data, please please please! :((