Mac OS X forum: Software to password protect folder(s) on an external HDD

mrmacfixit,

Sorry about the capitalization! It is not a network drive. I use it mainly on my Mac... and would like for others (son or mother) who may use the hard drive to back-up their files to it, to not be able to access one particular folder that I have on the drive. I have more than one external but would really like to be able to keep all of my backed-up info on this one drive as it my largest (500GB). Or say I take the drive to a buddies house to show them one of my vacation videos on it... I don't want them to just be able to click the folder open! The password I would use on it will be secure enough that short of several hours under a brute force attack, no one will be able to get into it!

The last thing I need is for my son or mother to come across these files! ... Let's just say they are some private pictures of my fiance.

Also, I want to make it very clear that I DO NOT want to encrypt any of the files! I almost lost all of these exact files after encrypting them on Windows XP and that machine got infected with a virus when I let someone else use it while I was reinstalling Windows on their machine... the files were on another external. I was able to get that machine to boot-up long enough to decrypt them! Otherwise it would have cost over 1K for a recovery company to even give it a try.

I know WinZip will do something like what I want... but I don't want it to encrypt or compress the files. And WinZip makes it a real pain to add files to a .zip file. I only make this comparison because I know that WinZip allows for password protection to the files it compresses. (yes I am aware that the .jpeg files can not be compressed any further)

Thanks! ~FATALII