Password protecting folders and drives...

50Cent

please tell me how to do this. People are coming to stay and i dont want them looking at my stuff...whether it be mountains of porn or my personal documents etc.

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

Capt'n Midnight

In real OS's it is trivial
(Linux/freebsd etc. etc.)

In FAT 16 /32 ie DOS / Win9x it can't be done by the OS
same applies to installs of NT / 2000 / XP unless using NTFS
(or HPFS on 3.51)

NT / 2000 /XP NTFS can be used to put permission s on files
but NTFSDOS / dual boot into another cppy of the OS can read them, As can a Knpooix CD

XP has a way of encrypting files - but I had to live through the whole DOS 6.0 / 6.2 / (6.21) / 6.22 / Win 95 & Stacker all using differnet encryptions..

There are any number of third party apps that calim to encrypt file -As Clint said " do you feel lucky, Punk - do you ? "

You could just always zip stuff ...

Simpliest thing to do is make sure the BIOS password is on in Setup . - That way if you screw up you can reset the password easily (unless it is a portable) .

Cal

OR !

Depending how computer savy your visitors are. You can simply right click on the directories or files and change their attributes to hidden and have your system set to not show hidden directories/files.

Really how often would a visitor change such a setting?

Cal

PiE

"Show hidden files" is always the first thing I do when using someone elses PC :]

daveg

I have a really small utility @ work that lets me hide folders/files. Once you lock them with a password the folder becomes invisable. PM me your email address if you want and I'll email it to you on Monday.

BigEejit

There are loads of freeware apps that hide folders ... the one I use (cant remember the name at the moment) makes the contents of the folder the same as the control panel folder, unless you unlock it with the app first...

vibe666

magic folders will do it quite well, unles they are really geeky.

other than that you might want to look at some sort of PGP encryption tool.

SOmething that can make a PGP partition on your HD would be ideal, then you just drag everything into that.

do a search on download.com for 'free pgp' and do a google search for magic folders. should sort out out good and proper.

you might want to get something to wipe over the free space too, if they will have access to the PC when you're out and could use file recovery tools to get deleted stuff back. East Tec Eraser is very good and will let you wipe free space and slack space from your mail files etc.

good luck.

Personally, if I wanted to make it as hard as possible for someone to get to my stuff I'd use Free PGP to create a virtual drive on the system, this virtual drive would have a container file stored somewhere (of your choosing) on the system. you would then use Magic folders (ideally on an ntfs formatted drive, for extra security) to encrypt and hide the container file with magic folders (you can only use magic folders for additional encryption if it's oon an ntfs partition (i.e. win nt/2k/xp).

once you have all that set up, use the eraser tool to clean and overwrite anything it will let you do (free space/slack space etc.) and nobody is getting that data, outside of the DoD!

And you all thought I was sweet and innocent;)

whosurpaddy

Originally posted by PiE
"Show hidden files" is always the first thing I do when using someone elses PC :]

y?

Ryo Hazuki

"Show hidden files" is always the first thing I do when using someone elses PC :]

Me too! Youd be suprised how times ive found hidden folders on the desktop containing all sorts of stuff.

You could just always zip stuff ...

Password zipping large ammounts of data takes ages! Believe me ive tried....

On XP you can remove all access rights from a folder, when someone tries to open it It will say "Access is denied"

You could then hide ths folder, and set the view to "Do not show hidden folders and files."

That should keep it fairly secure, unless your relatives are actually going looking for something.

Set up a guest account with no admin rights for extra security.

Of course none of this will work if your not using Win2k/XP.

daveg

Tis Called hide files

Col_Loki

Hey i use winzip to password my files !! Just lump all your files into one zip file with password enabled (do this at the exact point u add the files or it wont work). Takes a bit of messing to get it to work at first, but it really does work a charm!!

Capt'n Midnight

a) it is not free - you need a license - try one of the free alternatives instead (the original author died penniless in a hotel room - hence part of my love for the corp.)

b) don't put all your eggs in one basket - you could use a script to zip each file one at a time. Note: for win311 I seem to remember a driver that did just that - and unzipped transparently too..
"error in zip file - use pkzipfix .... "

Hmm... if the bods are very low tech then zip without compression (fast) and then rename the zips to something like .mdB and uninstall the zip program..

vibe666

password protecting a zip file will stop people opening the files within the zip, but they can still see the contents of the zip file itself, so if there are, say lots of jpeg files, some fo the filenames might give away what the contents are anyway.

John2002

Originally posted by vibe666
password protecting a zip file will stop people opening the files within the zip, but they can still see the contents of the zip file itself, so if there are, say lots of jpeg files, some fo the filenames might give away what the contents are anyway.

To overcome this you could just zip the zip file with no compression. That way when you open the file in Winzip or whatever all you will see is another zip file.

Capt'n Midnight

Yes it will list the names
a) rename to .mdb as already suggested.
or
b) zip the zip file so you only see the name of the previous one - you can't recompress so use no compression on either the contents or the container

parasite

winrar password protects archives

winrar > winzip

remember to click the encrypt file names box so 'people' don't see 'porn.jpg'