Protecting the contents of my drives

I have long maintained the practice of having a C: partition for my OS and programs and a D: partition for my documents. I use Windows XP Pro SP2, my Windows account is password protected, and the Guest account is disabled. As far as I know, there would be no way for someone who steals my computer (which happend two days ago, by the way) to use it without installing a new OS, which requires a format of the C: drive. However, I never thought of this until now, but once they do that, everything on D: is there for them to see. For my future reference, is there a way to protect the contents of all my drives from unauthorized use?

 

You can encrypt all your documents or even the entire D: drive so when someone tries to access it, they'll be prompted for a password. If they don't know it, all they'll see is garbage. There's also just passwording the D: drive without encryption, but that would be easier to get around.
Try these links:
http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/hackertools/a/aafreecrypt.htm
http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/encryption.shtml
Those two should be a good start. Try Googling something like "encryption software" or maybe "password protection" or something similar for more info. You can also check the Covert Ops section or the Security section here at MajorGeeks....
GOOD LUCK!!!

hd2k