If someone looks at that file all they see is random data - there's no way to know what that file contains. With TrueCrypt, you create a single file on your computer's hard drive that is encrypted. in other words, the data is encrypted while on your machine as well as in transit).

If you're really interested in secure file transfer, then you can use a tool like PGP Desktop or SecureZip for this purpose (or in addition to the above ideas.

Rather than just encryptiong a folder, you'd either encrypt your entire disk (including the operating system itself), or you'd create a virtual drive (mountable as a drive letter), or encrypt a partition on your machine.

Full disk encryption programs, including: TrueCrypt, PGP WDE, etc.

(Caution - take special care when backing up EFS-encrypted files to also back up the EFS recovery key!)

EFS (encrypting file system) - use that if you have XP Pro (not Home) you'll be able to access files in a given encrypted directory transparently, as the decryption key is tied to your Windows login.

Like, do you need to encrypt a folder for your use only? Are you sharing the files in the folder w/ others, who are also editing those files? Are you sharing across a LAN or WAN? etc.Ībsent that info, I'll throw out some random ideas! Here goes. Need more info to help you determine the best option. If on the other hand you want to prevent even an administrator from seeing the folder contents, you need to be prepared to accept the implications, such as not being able to recover it in a DR scenario, losing your data if you forget the password, and so on. You can do this just as easily, and in a format that's going to be natively supported by the OS (as well as recoverable by an administrator in the event of a DR), so NTFS permissions will meet your requirement precisely. I don't think you specifically want to use a password, I think instead that you want to have a specific folder that has access restricted to certain selected individuals.

Now, consider the objective you want to achieve here. Password protection of files and folders is NOT a feature of the NTFS filesystem. The misconception generally comes from the fact that it's possible to password-'protect' a Word doc but what's actually going on here is that Word itself is providing the password-'protection'. This is a common enough question (I'm guaranteed to get it from users at least once per quarter myself) and the short answer is that - without some external tool - you can't.

Adding password to folder