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Is it possible to password protect a drive? I have an external 250gb drive that I've been putting all my questionable material in so when my daughter spends time at my home I just unplug the drive and viola I have a family friendly terminal for her to use. However is it possible to set up password protection on that particular drive so she can't access it? In the alternative, if I were to create an account for her on my computer (I have XP) can I specify that the drive not be accessed under her account?

I don't know about external HDDs, but on the actual HDD this is how I protect stuff: Try putting everything inside a dummy folder, and password-protecting the folder. That is, D:\Dummy Folder\Questionable Material. Additionally, the dummy folder will prevent it, if set on thumbnails or filmstrip view of a drive, from showing previews of what's in it.

That should do it well enough. If you're really paranoid, have two layers of New Folder and Copy of New Folder (1) or more with passwords, seperate ones if you're insane or something.

A protected ZIP file can also work (advantage: Children probably don't know how, like old people, to open zip files), but your pr0n collection is probably too big to effectively zip and unzip at will, ne?

If you are running XP Professional and have separate accounts for yourself and your daughter, yes. Right-click on a folder, click the 'Security' tab and you can block people from accessing it.

Stravo wrote:I just unplug the drive and viola I have a family friendly terminal for her to use.

Typos that spell other words are the best kind.

I've actually been trying (not quite hard enough to succeed) to find how you assign passwords to particular folders; if I ever knew I've forgotten.

You can use axcrypt to encrypt files or folders. The downside is it'll take longer to access the data you encrypt.

Jaepheth wrote:You can use axcrypt to encrypt files or folders. The downside is it'll take longer to access the data you encrypt.

Windows has built-in encryption.

Not all versions of Windows has the ability to use the built-in encryption. I think all versions of Vista, and the Pro version of XP can use ACLs however. So you could specifically deny users access to certain files.

phongn wrote:If you are running XP Professional and have separate accounts for yourself and your daughter, yes. Right-click on a folder, click the 'Security' tab and you can block people from accessing it.

Actually, that only works for "My Documents" and subfolders thereof.

AMX wrote:

phongn wrote:If you are running XP Professional and have separate accounts for yourself and your daughter, yes. Right-click on a folder, click the 'Security' tab and you can block people from accessing it.

Actually, that only works for "My Documents" and subfolders thereof.

You're quite wrong.

Actually, I think its true for the sucktastic XP Home. For Pro, you have to go into Tools->Folder options and disable something or other (its been a while and I don't have access to XP at home) to get the full dialog.

After that, yes, its real simple - just set yourself up as the only one able to do anything with the folder/drive and make your daughters account a limited one. For extra measure you could encrypt the folder/drive (also requires Pro) so that even if she for some strange reason attached it to another computer she could not see anything.

phongn wrote:

AMX wrote:

phongn wrote:If you are running XP Professional and have separate accounts for yourself and your daughter, yes. Right-click on a folder, click the 'Security' tab and you can block people from accessing it.

Actually, that only works for "My Documents" and subfolders thereof.

You're quite wrong.

The hell I am.

In My Documents:


Elsewhere:


Note greyed out option.
And yes, this is XP Pro.
And no, Folder Options does not offer any such setting, either.

AMX wrote:The hell I am.

You have Simple File Sharing on, which causes Windows to hide the Security tab.

You appear to be correct.
Incidentally, that little tidbit would have been really useful in your first post; you know, just because your advice doesn't work with default options...