ray

What is the best program to use to password protect folders on a Windows XP box? Is it possible to password protect folders on an external hard drive as well, or does an OS need to be active on the partition that I'm protecting files on?

Hiro

No an OS doesn't need to be active. And instead of passwording them, make them only accessible via certain User Accounts or Permissions.

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GilbertsGrape

and how do you do that?

DaFunkyUnit

right click, Security tab.

(do it as an administrator, of course)

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ray

but what happens if i take an external hard drive and move it to my laptop?

Burzhui

i believe there is an option to log in to that folder via username and password then... i'm not too sure.

I used to use this program called magic folders. what it does is it completely hides the folder, so you can't search for it or see it thorugh win explorer/ my computer. and only by entering the password are you able to see it

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IF A FAT GIRL FALLS IN THE WOODS
DO THE TREES LAUGH?

ialsohaveadream

Back to the original question, though...is there a cheap, easy way to password protect specific folders? I've searched on CNet's download page and not found a program that did this (although I last searched about 6 months ago).

Tommy Boomfiger

IIRC, if you are in the same workgroup (or domain. im assuming you arent using domains), you can assign permissions to accounts on the laptop and they can decrypt the files as well. but if you are on totally different separated systems, i dont think one box will be able to see user accounts on the other. man why did MS have to make ntfs permissions so complicated in xp, it was so much easier in 2k

right click on a folder, open the properties and click the advanced button. put a check in the box that says encrypt to secure data. now only your account can access that folder. cheap and easy

NOTE: all the above requires files to be on an NTFS partition. this stuff doesnt work with FAT

Jeffbx

PGP Personal Desktop includes a handy little tool that allows you to set aside a chunk of your hard drive as an encryped virtual drive... it's portable so you can access it from multiple machines, but every machine needs to have the PGP client loaded.