Problem is with most of the modern day free and/or commercial encryption software if you give it a nice long password it is not physically possible using the computering power we have to decrypt the data. The possible # of combinations would take all the computers in the world working together several hundred lifetimes over. So the "geek route" is useful.
Or better yet use the "container within container" that TrueCypt has. You can have one container with your REAL data and put that inside a second container with data. So when the tech sees that the drive is encrypt and they do force you to give us the password they get the password for the "data container" and never realize that the REAL container with data is still in the hard drive INSIDE the 1st container! MMMUUUUAAAHHHHHH
Or be even more evil and encrypt your data inside .BMP image files.
With HIDE IN PICTURE and looking at the BMP file no one will ever know that it holds data!
My head hurts after reading that!
I guess I just don't have enough stuff worth hiding. Who cares about pics of cute little boys and house cleaning schedules?