How to get simple folder encryption in Vista Home Premium?

[David Mayerovitch]

In Windows XP you could get simple encryption of your files by compressing
them into a zip folder and applying a password. You could carry these files
around on a CD or a USB stick and be confident that you could decrypt them
on pretty much any Windows system you visited.

Microsoft has provided industrial-strength encryption for the high-end
versions of Vista, but for some reason seem to have assumed that nobody who
buys Vista Home Premium would want to have even the simple protection
provided in XP. There are permissions and user account passwords, of course,
but what about the need for protected files on removable media?

As far as I can see, there seems to be no way of replicating in Premium the
encrypted-folder scheme of XP. The Help files explicitly say there isn't.

I assume the only solution is to get a small third-party encryption app to
carry around on your USB stick or CD, an app which does not have to be
installed on a host machine. Any suggestions?

David

 

[Iuvenalis]

In Windows XP you could get simple encryption of your files by compressing
them into a zip folder and applying a password. You could carry these
files around on a CD or a USB stick and be confident that you could
decrypt them on pretty much any Windows system you visited.

Microsoft has provided industrial-strength encryption for the high-end
versions of Vista, but for some reason seem to have assumed that nobody
who buys Vista Home Premium would want to have even the simple protection
provided in XP. There are permissions and user account passwords, of
course, but what about the need for protected files on removable media?

As far as I can see, there seems to be no way of replicating in Premium
the encrypted-folder scheme of XP. The Help files explicitly say there
isn't.

I assume the only solution is to get a small third-party encryption app to
carry around on your USB stick or CD, an app which does not have to be
installed on a host machine. Any suggestions?

There are lots of ways.
You can install Truecrypt on your machine & create a encrypted volume on a
USB disk in Traveller mode so that it can be read on another Windows machine
without Truecrypt installed.
But I just install Truecrypt on all machines I use, it's a very small app,
not resident in memory unless you choose to start it with windows & is free
& open source.
If TC is installed, I just create regular encrypted volumes on my USB disks.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

The above is ok for removeable media, but for the system itself, full volume
encryption is the way to go. That way if the machine is stolen, the data
cannot be read if the disk mounted in another machine.

There are lots of apps out there for this. A free app not yet updated for
Vista is free compusec. I used it without probs in XP for a long time & it
will be Vista compatible in v5.

http://www.ce-infosys.com/english/downloads/free_compusec/index.html

If you want full volume encryption now, there are lots of commercial apps.

 

[David Mayerovitch]

Thanks, Iuvenalis. Very helpful advice!

David

There are lots of ways.
You can install Truecrypt on your machine & create a encrypted volume on a
USB disk in Traveller mode so that it can be read on another Windows
machine without Truecrypt installed.
But I just install Truecrypt on all machines I use, it's a very small app,
not resident in memory unless you choose to start it with windows & is
free & open source.
If TC is installed, I just create regular encrypted volumes on my USB
disks.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

The above is ok for removeable media, but for the system itself, full
volume encryption is the way to go. That way if the machine is stolen,
the data cannot be read if the disk mounted in another machine.

There are lots of apps out there for this. A free app not yet updated for
Vista is free compusec. I used it without probs in XP for a long time &
it will be Vista compatible in v5.

http://www.ce-infosys.com/english/downloads/free_compusec/index.html

If you want full volume encryption now, there are lots of commercial apps.

 

[Guest]

Yep. That is _exactly_ the assumption behind Home Edition. That is why
almost all the security tools are removed in Home Edition.

With respect to password protected compressed folders, however, that
functionality seems to have been removed in all versions of Vista. I can't
find it in Business either.

I've used 7-zip since before Vista was released. It works reasonably well,
and has password protection: http://www.7-zip.org/. Windows will be able to
open archives with passwords on them. It just can't set a password.