PC utilities forum: how do I encrypt a whole folder

Which OS, XP, Vista, Mac OS? Which one?

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Mark

I can't help wondering if some of those bringing in encrypted files and hoping you could hack into them were really not the legitimate owners. Maybe they were trying to find out what their spouse or child or employee is hiding, or worse, maybe they just stole it and hope to get some personal info they can misuse for fun and profit.

Seems to me that if anyone encrypts a file, they'd better be sure not to loose/forget the decryption key or the program used to encrypt/decrypt the files.

There are several programs that can encrypt individual files or complete folders. Some archiving programs can also encrypt while compressing several files into a single archive file. It is possible to first compress a folder into a single archive file, then encrypt that archive file, of course, that means taking two steps - first decrypting then "unzipping" the archive in order to read it.

IIRC, Win XP Professional has a provision to encrypt files and folders, and I was considering an upgrade just for that feature. I'm not sure if that is included in any versions of Vista.

You cannot encrypt the folder, but you can create a TrueCrypt (free) container and place all of the files in it. You can then copy the container around like a file, and "mount" it so that you access your files through their own unique drive letter. (X:\My Encrypted Files\plans.txt)You can install it on your own PC and/or place it into Traveler Mode so you can run it off of a flash drive. Note, however, that you can never recover your password should you forget it and that you must have administrative privileges on the computer you're using to access those files.

Hope this helps,
John

I encrypt things with PKware's SecureZip. I got SecureZip Standard Edition for free, but it looks like only SecureZip Express is now free.

http://www.pkware.com/software-data-security/free

It's a PC Magazine Editor's Choice.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2310209,00.asp

With the Standard version you don't have to get a digital certificate or use the program's Outlook functions, if you don't want to.

This is the Windows EFS encryption. Whilst it certainly encrypts files and folders, there are drawbacks and limitations.

1] The Limitation.

EFS will only work on a hard drive that has been formatted to NTFS. If it is in FAT32 format, EFS will not work.

2] Drawbacks.

The one major drawback is backing up the encryption certificate. Too many people don't do this, and if their hard drive then begins to fail and they transfer their files to another hard drive, they need that certificate. Without it the folder/file cannot be opened. If the hard drive fails before they can backup their certificate, that folder/file becomes unusable.

This Microsoft Knowledge Based article explains more at "Why you must back up your certificates".

The advice normally given in these forums is, "Don't use EFS".

Mark

USB Stick Encryption is especially designed to create password protected USB memory sticks. It creates protected areas on the disk that is needed to enter password to see contents. Data on the protected areas are encypted by 256-bit AES on-the-fly encryption. Protected USB stick is fully autonomous and does not need any special software installed on computer.