No problem. That's available if your drive is formatted with NTFS instead of
FAT32 (which is recommened for performance reasons among other things). You
can convert your drive to NTFS without losing anything (but do please back up
before running any disk utlity like this, just in case).
Before you convert, run disk defragmenter.
To convert it, type this at the command prompt or "run" box:
convert c: /fs:ntfs
Where c: is the drive you want to convert.
Note: NTFS-formatted drives can NOT be read by Windows Me/98 or earlier, Mac
OS, or some Linux versions. If that's a concern, don't convert your data.
You might get a prompt to reboot to complete the convertion (it can't run
while files are being used).
What you can expect: better performance, more options, more security.
After you convert, run disk defragmenter again, just to clean things up.
__________________
About using encryption: this will make the files undreadable if accessed by
other users on your machine, but does not "password protect" the files
per-say. It just means you have to be the one logged on to the computer to
read those encrypted files. Also, files are de-crypted if you move them to a
folder or any other device that's not encrypted or doesn't support the EFS
(Encrypting File System), such as a CD.
If you have any questions, post back here.
- skeene