Hide Folders 5 - Hide, lock and password protect your private files and folders from other users

Functionality

• Immediate data protection (protect and unprotect commands are executed in no time);
• 4 protection methods available: Hide, Lock, Hide & Lock, Read Only;
• NTFS, FAT32, exFAT and FAT volumes are supported;
• Support of file masks (wildcards);
• Trusted processes option lets you specify programs permitted to access the protected data;
• Unlimited number of files and folders can be protected at the same time;
• No limits on the size of protected data.

Security

• Password protection to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your private data;
• Safe mode support - Your files and folders can be hidden even if your computer is running in safe mode;
• Protected uninstall;
• Different wiping tracks options.

Safety

• Removing Hide Folders application folder from the system will not uncover hidden folders;
• Files from hidden folders will not be lost even if someone tries to remove an upper-level folder.

Reliability

• Data integrity - no file system structure modifications;
• Critical folders awareness - Hide Folders prohibits locking system folders for stability reasons.

Availability

• Hot keys to manage basic Hide Folders functions;
• Command line support of all main Hide Folders functions;
• Support of folders named with national language symbols;
• Multilingual support, its user interface supports different languages and can be easily translated to new languages;
• Intuitive and extremely easy-to-use user interface with skins.

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.