protecting files on shared external hdd

P

privatebribert

Geek Trainee
Hi all,we have a 350gb external hard drive that we share around our household for backing up data etc,I would like to know if its possible to somehow stop mine and mrs data from being looked at by our offspring,we are running winxp offspring vista home,tia
 
If the file system on your drive is NTFS then you can encrypt it using the built in XP system so that only the user who owns the files can access it.

In Professional, this should be Properties>Advanced>Encrypt. In home, there is an option to "Make folder private" I believe, but I'm not too sure on that.

Edit: Sorry, if you are using home the solution won't work, as the folder needs to be under the user's profile directory.
 
FAT32 has no built in security, so the best you can do in your situation is to archive and password protect the data using winrar is similar.
 
well i'm a linux user & i think if you were to partition the HDD and setup an ext2 or ext3 partition on that HDD and use the user manager to only allow certain users to be able to access the partition

BTW: here's an ext2 partition driver you can probaby find another driver with google like the following url [google]ext3 for windows[/google]

Edit: Ext2 & Ext3 is a format for a partition kinda like NTFS & FAT32

Edit: XP will not recognize an ext partition without the correct drivers, but, i can't comment about vista as i have never used it
 
donkey42 said:
well i'm a linux user & i think if you were to partition the HDD and setup an ext2 or ext3 partition on that HDD and use the user manager to only allow certain users to be able to access the partition

BTW: here's an ext2 partition driver you can probaby find another driver with google like the following url [google]ext3 for windows[/google]

Edit: Ext2 & Ext3 is a format for a partition kinda like NTFS & FAT32

Edit: XP will not recognize an ext partition without the correct drivers, but, i can't comment about vista as i have never used it
Click to expand...

Don't think XP will allow you to block users from accessing the partition, not easily anyway. There's no file permissions as in unix systems.
 
can you just set the files as hidden or maybe set them as system files & obviously set th OS to not show OS files, this may not work as i've not used XP for a while, and sorry about suggesting something the would not work easily

BTW: thankies Addis
 
Why not just keep it simple and get some 3rd party encryption software. Theres plenty floating around and its not as if you're encrypting top secret military secrets......or are you? :dry:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top