Tips on password protecting your files and folders

In the old days when Windows 95 and Windows 98 versions were used, there was no option provided by the operating system to protect your files and you had to purchase separate software product to be able to password protect your files or directories containing sensitive data. Now, new operating systems like Windows XP or Windows NT have a built-in option allowing the user to password protect a file or folder.

It is very important to make back-ups of the files you intend to password protect just in case you might forget the password. Password protecting a file or folder is also known as encryption which is an option provided by the new operating systems like XP Professional or XP Home Edition.

The easiest way to encrypt your data is to right click on the folder or file you want to encrypt, select Properties then click on the Advanced button in the General tab and in the “Compress or Encrypt Attributes” section select “Encrypt contents to secure data” then click Apply or OK.

In Windows XP Home edition after selecting the Properties of the folder in the “Sharing” tab, you can check the box “Make this Folder private”. This option works only if your hard disk drive was formatted using the NTFS file system. It is also important to know that in Windows Home edition you can only password protect folders found under “C:\Documents and Settings\”.

In case you want to protect files or folders which are not being used too frequently, the best option is to use the operating system’s built in folder or file compression utility. This allows both to compress and password protect your files or folders.

Important:

Despite the advanced features of new operating systems to make it possible for the user to protect files and folders, it is not one hundred percent safe to protect sensitive or top secret data by using the operating system’s encryption utility. In this case you rather use some third-party software product specially developed to protect your files on your computer.