Hide Folders – Hide, lock and password protect your private files and folders from other users

A lot of advanced users believe that Hide Folders (as well as any other third party folder protection software) is useless because Windows has integrated file and folder lock features.

Well, indeed, you can lock folders with Windows and this folder will be inaccessible by the other (unauthorized) users. But there are some annoying limitations that you should be aware of:

1. Windows allows you to lock files and folders on NTFS volumes only. FAT and exFAT volumes are not supported;
2. With Windows you can set user permissions to read/write/modify data, but not to hide files or folders;
3. NTFS won’t let you make a folder invisible but accessible which is helpful for different security tasks like logging, private data recording, backing up etc;
4. A system administrator can easily get access to the folders and files locked with Windows NTFS features;
5. Some Windows home editions don’t have user interface to protect files and folders;
6. Windows does not allow setting password for protected data. It authenticates users at logon. So if you share your Windows account with the other users, then you can’t use Windows folder protection features;
7. It takes time to manage access control in Windows and requires administrative skills from users.