Protect your PC with a hard-drive password

Protect your PC with a hard-drive password

A user-account password is important for security, but it's useless if your PC is lost or stolen; a thief could just install your hard drive in another PC instead of trying to boot it up under your name. To block access, add a password to the hard disk.

This process is simpler than encrypting the hard disk, but it can't match encryption's level of security. (Encryption scrambles data so that even if a thief gains access, he probably can't make sense of it.) Think of this action as adding another strong lock.
When prompted at boot, press the key to enter your PC's BIOS (often it's Esc or a function key). Your BIOS menus and names will vary, but the process will be similar. On the Phoenix Technologies BIOS found on many PCs, use the arrow keys to navigate to the Security tab. Press down to highlight HDD Password, and press Enter.

Type in the password, being sure to remember it or store it in an encrypted password utility -- if you lose the password, recovering the data could cost a lot of money.
Follow the on-screen commands to exit and save your changes. Now whenever you start the PC, you'll see a prompt to enter the HDD Password first. If you want to remove the password later, return to the BIOS. Revisit the HDD Password setting, enter the current password, and leave the new-password field blank.