Password Protect a Hard Drive? (w/o encrypting)

[Necrosaro420]

Are there any programs out there that will allow you to protect a hard drive w/o actually encrypting it? Reason I dont want it encrypted is that I format alot, and I know if I encrypt, one of these times im going to forget to unencrypt it before I format and ill lose it all...

Thanks!



Would this be what im looking for? I want to make sure before I purchase. Thanks!

Folder Lock

 

[Security Guy]

If you unencrypt and then format it, you'll still lose it all..

 

[Necrosaro420]

dur...Sorry, its a slave drive which will not be formatted...but the main drive will, I dont want to lose items on the slave drive =)

 

[Skeeedunt]

I assume you're referring to the built-in Windows EFS encryption, in which case I believe you can back up your encryption key and then import it back in when you reinstall (you should probably make sure how and if that's true, but that would likely be the easiest thing).

You can also use password-based encryption for the drive like TrueCrypt.

I'm not sure what the best method to lock people out of folders without encryption would be, but just keep in mind that if someone physically moved that drive to another computer, there's nothing short of encryption that would keep them out. If you just want to keep nosy local users out, maybe NTFS permissions would be enough?

 

[WildHorse]

One is to right click the drive, click the Security tab (if you don't see it then you need to turn off Simple FIle Sharing) and deny every other user profile all rights to the drive, so they can't read it or write to it. They will however still see the drive letter listed.

Then to remove the drive letter too, install TweakUI and log into each user's account, go into Tweak UI / My Computer / Drives and uncheck the drive letter. Then they won't see the drive letter listed at all.

 

[Nothinman]

If I were you I'd find the root cause of why I'm formatting a lot and fix that problem first.

 

[Necrosaro420]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
If I were you I'd find the root cause of why I'm formatting a lot and fix that problem first.

I format every 4-5 months, keeps things running smoothly. Ive done it with every computer I own.




Anyways im in college and I just want to keep my roommate from accessing certain files on my computer. I have my D drive, and I just want to keep it password protected.

Dont need it encrypted, just set so you have to have a password to get on the disk.



Will my above link work? http://www.newsoftwares.net/folderlock/ Just want to verify because im not totally sure what im looking for. Thanks

 

[Nothinman]

I format every 4-5 months, keeps things running smoothly. Ive done it with every computer I own.

Which is a completely unnecessary practice these days.

 

[NYCSTE2003]

well windows is horrible at cleaning up old programs installed and updated files and all that stuff unless you know how to remove it all yourself most cleaning programs dont remove it and its just there on your rig till you reformat.

i tend to reformat 1-2times a year or so i think. but thats also cuz i upgrade computer sometimes to a totally diff system or just do it for fun and test a new nlite or something.

how often nothinman do you think one should reformat if they like their computer running optimal. cuz longer windows runs i swear it gets slower esp firefox and i do my best to clean things up.

haha on that note i gotta reformat cuz im bugged up the tush

 

[Nothinman]

I almost never reformat. Hell my last Linux installation ran for like 7 years before I replaced the machine it was on and the only reason I installed new instead of transfering the old image to the new machine was because I wanted to install an AMD64 distribution. The install on my current laptop was also migrated from my old laptop and it runs just fine as well.

I only run Windows occasionally in VMWare and it still runs fine and the servers I seem to have unwittingly acquired at work run fine too even though they don't seem to have been managed well.