What's the best way to encrypt data on your hard drive such that if it is stolen you have some assurance that they can't get at the data? My understanding of how cryptography works is limited, but it seems that public/private key stuff, like GnuPG, wouldn't be sufficient for this because your secret key is stored on the hard drive and if someone gets that it's all over.
I suppose you get generate your key, decrypt the file, and delete the key, but that seems like a difficult process if you regularly need to access the data. Any suggestions? Gary