How to Password Protect Files and Folders With Encryption

Whether you want to store sensitive data on a USB drive, securely email it, or just add an additional layer of security on your hard drive, there are a variety of ways to protect your files with a password.

When we say we’re “password protecting” a file, we generally mean we’re encrypting the fileso it can’t be decrypted and understood without your encryption password. That’s the most secure way to password protect files.

Create an Encrypted Archive

Windows XP allowed you to create password-protected ZIP files, but Windows 7 doesn’t. That’s fine — you can download a free third-party file compression program that will handle this for you. There are many file-compression programs you could use, but we recommend the completely free and open-source 7-Zip.

After installing 7-Zip, use it to create a new archive — either via the 7-Zip option in your Windows Explorer right-click menu or the Add button in the 7-Zip application. You’ll be able to specify a password for your archive — be sure you leave AES-256 selected as the encryption type. Any files and folders you add to your .zip file (or whatever other type of archive you choose to create) will be encrypted with your selected password. You’ll need to enter your password when you open your archive file in the future.

Encrypt an Office Document

Microsoft Office allows you to apply encryption to documents, securing them with a password. Microsoft switched to AES encryption in Office 2007, so if you’re using an earlier version of Office the encryption will be nowhere near as secure.

To password protect a document in Office 2013 or Office 2010, click the File menu, click the Protect Document button in the Info section, and select Encrypt With Password. You’ll be prompted to enter a password, which you’ll have to provide each time you open the document in the future. You can also fully decrypt the document in the future, removing the need for a password.

Follow these instructions to encrypt a document if you’re still using Office 2007.

Other productivity programs may offer similar features. For example, Adobe Acrobat allows you to create password-protected PDF files. Word 2013 can encrypt PDF files with a password, too.

Create Encrypted Volumes With TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt allows you to create encrypted volumes. TrueCrypt is a very flexible encryption solution, and you can use it in a variety of ways:

• Create a small encrypted container stored in a file on your hard drive. You’ll need your encryption password to “mount” this file as a special drive, allowing you to view and manipulate its contents. When you “unmount” the drive, no one can see its contents without providing your encryption passphrase.
• Use TrueCrypt to create an encrypted volume on a USB flash drive or other removable drive, allowing you to carry sensitive files around with you worrying that they could be viewed if you ever lose the drive. TrueCrypt can be used as a portable application, allowing you to access your encrypted data even on computers that don’t have TrueCrypt installed — the TrueCrypt program files can be stored on the external drive itself.
• Encrypt your entire Windows system drive, forcing anyone to enter a password when booting your computer or resuming from hibernate. This ensures that no one can access the contents of your hard drive as long as you leave your computer locked or powered off. (Unless they use the freezer attack, which is uncommon in the real world.)

Use Built-In Windows Encryption Features

If you’re using a Professional or Enterprise edition of Windows, you also have access to some special encryption features. Home versions of Windows — and the standard edition of Windows 8, which technically isn’t named a “home” version — don’t have access to these features. Professional editions of Windows include the following two encryption features:

• BitLocker, which allows you to create encrypted volumes on drives, including external USB flash drives. BitLocker functions in much the same way as TrueCrypt, so you can use a similar feature on the more common editions of Windows.

• Encrypting File System (EFS), which allows you to encrypt individual folders and files. To use this feature, right-click a file or folder, select Properties, and click the Advanced button on the General tab. Enable the Encrypt contents to secure data option — this will be grayed out if you’re not using the correct edition of Windows. Files are essentially encrypted with your Windows user account password, so you’ll lose them if you forget your Windows password. Bear in mind that these files are only encrypted when stored on your hard drive, so you can’t email them securely without encrypting them in a different way.

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There are many other tools that can be used to encrypt files, but the above methods are some of the easiest and most powerful.

How To Password Protect Your USB Stick: 3 Easy Ways

How To Password Protect Your USB Stick: 3 Easy Ways

by Tina Sieber

USB thumb drives are small, portable, and can be read on any device with a USB port. These features make them the perfect vehicles to transport data between computers. Due to their portability, however, they are also easily lost. Thus sensitive files callired on a USB stick should always be protected.

Unfortunately, you cannot simply password protect your entire USB stick, like you have password protected your Facebook account. Tools that will seriously protect your your data, all work with encryption. Unless you want to invest in a secure flash drive with hardware encryption, you can use freeware applications to achieve a similar level of protection. This article summarizes some of the easiest ways to password protect files and folders on your computer.

1. Manually Save Files With a Password

As mentioned above, you can't safely password protect your entire USB stick without using encryption. However, if you shy away from the time consuming encryption process of entire folders and need a really quick way to only protect a few selected files, maybe you can simply save those with a USB password.

Many programs, including Word and Excel, allow you to save files with a password. For example in Word, while the document is open, go to >Tools > Options and switch to the Security tab. Now enter a Password to open, click OK, re-enter the password when asked, and finally save your document and don't forget the password.

2. Create An Encrypted & Password Protected Partition With Rohos Mini Drive

Many tools can encrypt and password protect your data. Most, however, require Administrator rights to run on any given computer. Unfortunately, this is also the case for one of the best encryption tools: TrueCrypt. Tools like these are not a viable solution if you need to securely transfer data to a computer where you do not have Administrator rights.

Rohos Mini Drive, on the other hand, is a tool that will work whether or not you possess Administrator rights. The free edition can create a hidden, encrypted, and password protected partition of up to 2GB on your USB flash drive. The tool uses automatic on-the-fly encryption with AES 256 bit key length. Thanks to the portable Rohos Disk Browser, which is installed directly on your flash drive, no encryption drivers need to be available on the local system. Subsequently the protected data will be accessible anywhere.

Once you have created a password protected and encrypted container on your external drive, you can open it by clicking the Rohos Mini.exe icon from the root folder. After entering the password, your Rohos disk will be mounted and accessible via your Computer, i.e. the directory of all drives and partitions connected to your system. To close your Rohos partition, right-click the Rohos icon in the Windows taskbar notification area and select Disconnect.

A more detailed description of Rohos Mini Drive can be read in my PDF guide The Office Worker's 101 Guide to a USB Thumb Drive.

3. Lock Your Flash Drive with USB Safeguard

Like Rohos Mini Drive, USB Safeguard is a portable app that runs directly from your flash drive and thus does not require Administrator rights on the local computer. It uses on-the-fly AES 256 bit encryption. The free version is limited to drive size of 2GB.

Download the usbsafeguard.exe and copy it to your USB flash drive. Run it from your flash drive and enter a password to lock the drive. To unlock it, run the file again and enter the password. The locking procedure must be repeated every time you want the drive to be locked as the tool will remember its last status, i.e. locked or unlocked. This also means that you can change the password every time you use USB Safeguard.

How to Create a Secretly Disguised Folder Without Extra Software

Almost anyone knows how to make a “hidden” folder in Windows, most people also know how to make Explorer show hidden folders. Instead, if your folder looked like an innocent shortcut no one would know you have data in there.

Using Command Prompt to Disguise a Folder

In this example I have an ordinary folder on the root of my drive called How-To-Geek.

To disguise it, I need to open a command prompt and navigate to the directory where its resides, since it is on the root of my drive I can use:

CD C:\

Now all I need to do is rename it and include the CLSID for Computer:

ren How-To-Geek How-To-Geek.{20d04fe0-3aea-1069-a2d8-08002b30309d}

Now if I go back to my folder it looks like a link to Computer, and if I click on it, it even opens Computer. No one can get inside this folder now without knowing the CLSID you used to hide it.

Using Command Prompt to Reveal Your Folder

You will need to navigate to the directory where the disguised folder resides.

CD C:\

Then all you need to do to unhide a folder is rename the folder back to what it was before:

ren How-To-Geek.{20d04fe0-3aea-1069-a2d8-08002b30309d} How-To-Geek

If you go look at your folder now you will see it’s back to normal.

Using Batch Files

If you want to go even one step further you can create batch files. The following one hides my folder.

Then to unhide it i use the following batch file.

All that you would need to do now is run one of the batch files.

You should also take note that although this is a geeky way of hiding your data nothing is stopping the person from deleting the folder which would delete everything you have inside as well.

How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

Encryption tools exist to protect your privacy… and also to make you feel like you’re an awesome spy. Today we’ll use a portable USB drive to hold all of your passwords encrypted in a virtual disk hidden inside a file.

Certain kinds of cryptography were once called “weapons of mass destruction” because certain people thought it was so dangerous. Although clever people are making it good security more and more difficult, encryption tools like the one we’ll be using today are readily available, free, and provide a high level of security that is nearly impossible to break into if done properly. Put on your spy mask and keep reading to find out how to build the perfect encrypted password safe.

And for the skeptics that are curious about the “FBI” claim in our headline, you can read up on Operation Satyagraha, where money launderer Daniel Dantas has successfully encrypted his data and kept the FBI at bay for as long as a year with the very tools we’re going to use today.

Step 1: Get A Reliable USB Drive

If you’re like many geeks, you’ve had your fair share of USB keydrives die on you. The cheap ten dollar drives may not be hardy enough to put a vault of your most important passwords on, so you may have to get a little spendy and pick up one that will last for a while. How-to Geek doesn’t endorse any particular brand of USB drives, but the author has had a lot of success with the Lacie Iamakey series. Lifehacker has featured them onseveral occasions, and they take a beating and keep your data safe. Use any brand that you think is good enough to hold keys to your online life—feel free to take the author’s recommendation with all the grains of salt you see fit.

Step 2: Create An Encrypted Drive or File with Truecrypt

A lot of software exists for encrypting files, but Truecrypt is a very solid choice. The two features we’re interested in are the ability to encrypt hidden files and the ability to run Truecrypt as portable software. You’ll need both if you ever intend to use your encrypted password key on any machine that isn’t your own.

• Download Truecrypt

We’ve done several great guides on how to use TrueCrypt, so we’re not going to delve too deeply into the details today. Here we’ll go over our a basic installation of a portable version of TrueCrypt on your USB disk. To begin, run the TrueCrypt installer and select “Extract” to install it on the USB disk.

And if you prefer, check out our previous guides to the program if you want to try and make your spy drive some other way.

• The How To Geek Guide to Getting Started With TrueCrypt
• The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume

TrueCrypt can’t be used “transparently” as a portable EXE file. This basically means that you’ll need administrator control over a machine to use it as a portable application. If this is okay to you, simply hit yes to go on to the next step. If not, you won’t really be able to open your encrypted drive on any machine but one with TrueCrypt installed, effectively tying it to your home PC. For today’s example, we’ll just be extracting it to the USB disk.

Extract the TrueCrypt files to any folder on the disk.

Find the TrueCrypt.exe file on your USB disk and run it. You’ll have to give that pesky administrator permission to start the program.

With TrueCrypt open, find “Create New Volume.”

We’ll be creating a volume hidden inside a file. Again, since we’ve already covered it, we’re going to be brief. For a more detailed article on creating a hidden volume with TrueCrypt (including how to create a hidden volume inside a hidden volume) check out our older article on hidden TrueCrypt volumes.

TrueCrypt asks us to pick a file to use as our hidden volume. Pick an empty, inconspicuous junk file. Don’t use anything important, because this file will be overwritten with your encrypted volume once you’re done.

With your volume file selected, click next to go onward.

TrueCrypt supports lots of different Encryptions Algorithms, but the default one will work well enough. Research them all if you care to, or just use the default AES encryption.

You’ll pick a size for your virtual disk. Unless your disk is full of big files, it might get noticed if it is too large. But don’t make it too small, because you might not be able to fit the portable application in the virtual disk.

Once that’s done, input a password or passphrase and optional keyfiles. You should probably be able to remember any password, but it should be secure enough that brute force methods of password cracking won’t break it easily.

TrueCrypt (and KeePass as well) can use practically any kind of file as part of the password. This can add extra layers of security beyond any password to your hidden volume. Simply be careful in your choice of file, since any change to the file’s contents may mean that it will no longer open your volume, and your data may be lost forever. When you’re done picking (or not using) keyfiles, hit OK, then hit Next on the “Outer Volume” screen.

Click format when you’re done looking at the random strings generated by your mouse movements.

Last warning—you’re overwriting the file you picked. Make sure you don’t use one you intend to keep!

You can now mount your “outer volume” on this screen and go on to create a “hidden volume” if you wish.

It’s pretty easy and can provide yet another layer to your labyrinth of encryption. But for our demonstration today, we’ll be skipping this step and mounting our drive to install KeePass.

Step 3: Mount the Hidden Drive and Install KeePass Portable

With TrueCrypt open, you can now open your hidden volume using your password and keyfile or keyfiles. Once you’ve mounted your virtual disk, you can open it by double clicking it in TrueCrypt.

If you’re following along, you’ll find that your new virtual disk is empty.

If you haven’t already, you can download KeePass portable to use on your new USB disk. You can download the standard version and only keep your passwords on the encrypted drive, but the portable version is also free and very easy to install on a USB disk.

• Download KeePass Portable
• Download the standard version of KeePass

Double click the installer to put the portable app on your (currently mounted) virtual disk.

In our example earlier, we mounted our encrypted disk as “G:” so we simply install KeePassPortable in that directory.

KeePass is a simple an intuitive program to use. It will generate and store long passwords as secure as we know how to make them. Even though the best practice may be turning towards passphrases over passwords, KeePass will store any either kind and recall it for you whenever you need to break into your accounts.

Assuming you’ve got the portable app installed, run it and select the option to create a new Password Database file. Like TrueCrypt, you can elect to use a password and keyfile, recommended to add security beyond a simple password or phrase. Just remember, the same rule applies—don’t use a file that is likely to change, because you may lock yourself out of your password safe forever if it does.

We won’t go into the wonders of KeePass today, since we’ve already covered them ages and ages ago and the program hasn’t functionally changed all that much. But, once you’ve created your password database, save it to the encrypted drive (G:/ in our example) to keep it away from prying eyes.

For a more in-depth write up on KeePass, check out our previous write-up, with the basics and great tips on how to use it.

• Securely Store Your Passwords with KeePass

Step 4: Your Passwords are Now Safe From The KGB

Now that you’ve got your passwords locked away in an encrypted vault, you can rest assured they’re safe from all but the most insanely dedicated of users. So what else do you want to use your new cryptographic powers for? Sensitive, personal files can be stored here, and other portable apps can be installed in your hidden virtual disk. Why not tell us about your experience with TrueCrypt in the comments, or simply email your thoughts to ericgoodnight@howtogeek.com.