Password Protection?

Kind of. If it's a shared computer with multiple accounts, you can make any folder private by right-clicking, going to properties, then sharing then checking "make this folder private." This won't stop anyone on your account from accessing the file, but if they are on another one it will be protected from them. The only other way I know is to put the folder in a .zip file and then password protect it form there, unfortunately though it's a hassle to browse, and you'll have to type in the password for every single time you want to access a file unless you completely extract it again, and then you'll have to constantly go through the process of extracting and re-zipping every time you access that folder.... and then of course if it's a huge folder it can take like an hour just to zip it.

Microsoft really dropped the ball in that area, really dumb. It's such an obvious feature that it makes no sense why they wouldn't implement it. They might have in Vista, but I don't know.

 

I suggest marking the folder private, and then encrypting it.
There are wonderful great really easy encryption programs online.

 

You're back?

 

Right click the folder. Click on properties. Under Attributes select "Hidden". Now the folder will only come up if you go to search, click files and folders, chose the folder it's located in, use the exact name (or a part of it) and go to advanced and select "search hidden folders aswell." when it comes up, right click->explore

 

Of course you could always just do it like this:



If you absolutely HAVE to have it password protected, then just use a number lock instead of a padlock, though for me personally it's keys or no dice.

 

Lets say there is a folder where your data is.
And you want want anyone else to touch the data in the folder.
Using one of numerous programs, you can encrypt it.
Once example of a small easy program to use is something like Toucan
http://portableapps.com/news/2007-11-21_-_toucan_1.2
Run the program, and then set it up to encrypt the folder with a password.

Someone will have to decrypt it to open the data.

I suggest, create a test folder first as a file. Then try to encrypt it and see if you can access the file

 

It is probably overkill, but TrueCrypt would take care of you nicely.

It can create file-based containers. Think of that as a file containing a hard disk and thus lots of other files. The single file itself is encrypted and can only be made useful with a password. With the password however, you can "mount" the file and make it show up as a regular drive in Windows. When you're done with putting in whatever you need, or when you've finished using the porn stored inside, you close the safe and "dismount" the file.

Better still, you can rename that file to something inconspicuous, like Dissertation.pdf.