How can I password protect an external hard drive?

I have an external hard drive and would like to be the only one who can access it.
Can anyone recommend a freeware program that would enable me to deny access to one or more external hard drives with a password. I do not need a program that scrambles and encrypts data. I just want to be able to prevent access to an external hard drive with password protection

 

By excluding encryption you've pretty much cut out all options. Truecrypt would be it. Maybe you could get one of those folder locking programs and make a single folder and put everything in it, but I have never used them and I am unsure how they work.

 

Why are you against encryption?

Get a copy of truecrypt.. its free, open source, supports a tonne of encryption algorithms and completely portable.

All you need to do is copy truecrypt.sys and truecrypt.exe to the root of the USB drive.. very simple...

 

"Maybe you could get one of those folder locking programs and make a single folder and put everything in it" i might just give that i go

I am weary of encrypting a whole drive for two reasons,
1) I am concerned that the program may have flaws in which I am not able to every access the drive again.
2) Concerns that I will not be able to download files into the encrypted drive