HI, just wondering if there was anything i could do without software.
Unless its built into the Flash drive, then no.
Windows bitlocker?
No, you need software for it. But you could create 2 partitions, one with truecrypt portable (linux, win and mac on fat if you want to be able to use it on all systems) and the other as a truecrypt container. So you can simply start truecrypt from the stick and unlock the other partition.
+1
Selotape :P
The best way to do it is using USB drives with built in encryption.
On the low end, there is the Buffalo MIni Station:
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/portable-hard-drives/ministation/ministation-plus
On the High End, the Imation IronKeys: http://www.ironkey.com
When you plug them in, they ask for a password before passing the encryption certificate to the Hard Drive controller thereby protecting the data on your drive without the need to install software.
That's a bad idea, honestly. They are like my solution with truecrypt but worse. Truecrypt is considered one of the best tool for encryption because it's open source and you can actually trust the software. You can't really trust the proprietary encryption software because they are all backdoored by the NSA or other agencies. Encryption on the hardware controller doesn't give you any advantages, too. The software also doesn't seem to work on all platforms.
+1 on Wickedwigs comment, proprietary encryption software offers no security at all, because you can't see what it does. Truecrypt is also partially proprietary, therefore there is realcrypt, which is the open source version of truecrypt, works exactly the same, but has no proprietary code, even though there is actually no real difference between the two, the difference is purely legal for the moment, but the difference could become real, because truecrypt could be nefariously "adapted", whereas realcrypt can't because it could not be concealed.
External drives with built-in encryption don't exist period? It's always just a proprietary software that is preloaded on them that is worth nothing.
Internal SSD Drives can have built-in encryption, if that encryption is done by the controller, and is based on the drive's ATA in the BIOS. Newer BIOS's from companies that traditionally market their boards as having extra BIOS features, actually often block the ATA-encryption. A lot of SSD manufacturers also don't use a controller than does reliable encryption (proprietary or proprietary software instead of controller functionality), however, if you buy less expensive mobos from Gigabyte, MSI or AsRock, or buy workstation mobos from Gigabyte or Supermicro or Tyan, the BIOS has a simple ATA passthrough, which is the only secure way to use real built-in SSD encryption. All Samsung SSDs support real SSD encryption based on ATA passthrough, and offer very good security. These could be used with e-SATA on a linux system for an external means of hardware encryption. On a Windows system, it won't work, because e-SATA drives are treated differently in Windows. You shouldn't use encryption on a Windows system anyway, because it's highly insecure, you can't even know what the system really does anyways.