Drive encryption without Bitlocker

[chili]

As above, i have a toshiba 1tb external drive i want to store some work stuff on ie wage slips, excel charts, some pdf's most of it is not of any use to someone else, but i would like to secure the drive, why make life easy for someone if i drop it or loose it on the train. I do not have bitlocker as my windows is only the home version.
I have looked at creating a secure folder using third party apps, but i fancy just encrypting the whole drive so when its plugged into my laptop it decrypts without prompt and when its ejected its encrypted.
Is there away for me to do this? an idiots guide would be appreciated

 

[chili]

Did the toshiba drive not come with some sort of 'secure locker' on the drive, pretty much every external drive I've had has had access to one and in my experience the ones I've used worked well enough for my needs.

Having said that I've always used pro versions of windows on my main rigs so I've had access to bitlocker...having said that iirc home can read/write bitlocker drives which have been setup on another pc, so that might be an option to check if you have access to another pc with pro on it.

i bought it 2nd hand it was wiped clean when i got it