Trying to understand the difference between password protect and encrypting external hard disk

[chrisus]

Hi I have a 4 Tb external hard drive(mechanical) that I would like to password protect. It has amongst other things my iTunes music folder on it,
I have an i7 Mac mini with 16gb ram and 250 ssd hard drive from 2018
I'm wondering, If I have understood it correctly
1- if I use fire vault to do this the whole disk and files will be encrypted and adding files will be encrypted on the fly, probably slowing down the speed of the hard disk?
2- If I use disk utility to do this it will just encrypt the hard disk with a password ?
Thanks for any input
Chrisus

 

[Weaselboy]

FileVault just encrypts the boot drive.

You will want to use Disk Utility to reformat the external drive to APFS Encrypted. Afterwards anything you add the the drive will be encrypted.

 

[chrisus]

Thank you so much Weaselboy,