G'day, I'm about to build a new computer, but will have to throw all my stuff on a 320gig portable passport hard drive. Problem here (apart from the fact they crash and I might lose everything), is that I will have large volumes of pornography and personal stuff to transfer and will be sharing the space on the external HDD with someone else for the duration of the build.

What I want to know, is what are some really secure ways to basically fence off entire massess of folders so that their content is hidden, and they're very strongly protected with password and no large loopholes etc?

Even if you tell me what free programs you guys might use, it will help.

I also want to know if I protect all those files then transfer them onto the external HDD, will they still be protected and inaccessible to anyone else, or will they be open, OR will they become inaccessable to anyone, including me?


Thanks, and I too wish I could have worded that more eloquently.

As this is an external drive, I would set the whole thing up as a Truecrypt volume, keep some bank documents or passwords or something in there, and then make a hidden Truecrypt volume inside that one (refer to the truecrypt docs as to how to do this).

The hidden volume will be undetectable to anyone else; if you are compelled to reveal the contents of the obviously encrypted volume, you can unlock the non-hidden one and show whoever it is your password files/illegally copied materials/taboo porn or whatever and keep the real secrets secret.

Truecrypt is fully cross-platform; while newer features usually hit Windows before they hit other OS's, it'll run on Windows, OS X, and GNU/Linux (I'm not sure about BSD's, but it might run there too). It's also free software, so it's likely trustable.

A virtual false bottomed briefcase! That's genius. Thanks a heap Prometheum (very quick reply, too), for providing an even better response than one I was after.

A virtual false bottomed briefcase! That's genius. Thanks a heap Prometheum (very quick reply, too), for providing an even better response than one I was after.

I'm always happy to help someone lend the power of strong crypto to their privacy efforts. Best of luck.

keep in mind true crypts hidden volume deniability features may be unintentionally compromised by third party software which may leak information through temporary files thumbnails etc to unencrypted disks vista MS word and google desktop have been tested and have found weaknesses

thou i agree truecrypt is great software i also recommend the use of multiple key files lol i have a pen drive with my keyfiles on it that i encrypted with additional key files stored else were so you have to unlock multiple things to get at one ... keep in mind it is a hassle to do and access each time but if security is a big issue truecrypt is the way to go

Can you password protect straight off of windows? I'm looking to just password some files I'm not too bothered about hiding them.

Windows itself has no means of doing that.

And pay attention to Warweed's first paragraph. That's incredibly important.