How do I password protect a folder in windows?
Originally Posted by wreckshop
You can't without some additional program and password protecting a folder or file is pretty useless against anyone with more than 2 brain cells.
You really would need encryption instead of password protecting it. Maybe the average high school dropout couldn't get past the password protection on a folder, but I could take the hard drive out and hook it to my computer and access your files. Even my child in middle school learned that in his computer class in 6th grade. Yeah, I thought that was strange for them to teach that, maybe it was a question being answered.
Even windows hasn't been able to completely block out access on 8.1 even when all of the logins are password protected. I can remove the password on your login or create an admin account to gain full access.
The best encryption would be on the drive and where if it is put in another computer, it can't be accessed unless you can break that encryption. Bad part of that is, you better have a backup somewhere because if the computer it was on gets fried, you can't recover the info on the hard drive by putting it in another computer. So you would want your remote backups encrypted too if it is important.
There are a few programs that can encrypt just the files you choose or the whole drive. Some hard drives come with encryption built in if you turn it on. I have not tested the encryption on them yet though. Bitlocker on windows can do what you need, but have never tested it either.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...ures/bitlocker