Maxtor Drive Touch II External & Lock drive?

i am looking at the above external and want to use it ghost my notebook.

My toshiba is pentium 4, intel pentium 4, 40 gigs, 1.9 ghz.

The hard drive is one of the new models out and is 250 gigs and has the feature Lock Drive which is supposed to be a security feature if the drive is stolen.

I use symantec's Ghost to Image my drive and I can use a bootable disk for an external usb 2.0 in the event of a crash.

What I am wondering about is if anyone knows how the "lock drive " feature works.
I have been told that if it is like an encryption feature with a password that my bootable disk for the external drive will be of no use in a crash as I won't be able to get to the point of putting in a password.

Security of my external drive is important to me due to the nature of my profession and thus I am looking for a way to Image on the external but have it secure and yet be able to get to the ghost if the system crashes.

I hope that there are members that may be familiar with this model of Maxtor and will be able to comment.

I have looked at the 160 gig Western Didital external drive and was going to use cryptainer for security and that was when I was advised that I would not be able to access my ghost image in the event of a crash and so that is why i am asking if anyone knows what "Lock Drive" is?

Thankyou