Secure a Stolen Storage Device?

[Deus Gladiorum]

Windows 8 seemingly goes to a good length to protect your information as compared to previous OSs (UEFI to require OS level access before you can format a drive), but isn't there a major security flaw that all OSs still have? Can't someone just get physical access to your primary drive, hook it up as a secondary drive in almost any other computer, and then be able to view basically anything you have on that device? Am I correct in thinking this? I know with various Windows 7 and Mac OS X drives, there were never any security measures once I had physical access to the drive and hooked it up as a secondary. Is that still the case with Windows 8 and other current operating systems? And if so, is there some kind of solution to such a massive security flaw -- preferably one that's not expensive?

 

[USAFRet]

Full disk encryption.
BitLocker or similar. Without the password, you're not getting in.

They could wipe the drive, but NOT access the data.