Has anyone ever thought to use Acronis to make password protected folders?

I was just thinking about it. Acronis lets you backup specified files/folders and store them in password protected archives...archives that can also be mounted to the NTFS system (or just opened to) with read and write permission.

So effectively, doesn't this give Acronis owners an extra perk for data protection?!? Or does this not work?

 

I haven’t used Acronis, but I certainly will if it let me create quick mountable password protected images (without extracting/decrypting files on to the hard disk first).

 

I'm playing around right now to see if it would work...

 

why do that when you could just use truecrypt?(open source, meaning very safe)
it does the same thing except that it's much more secure.
creates a file (any name, extension, type you want) you can then mount that file with password. You can even create hidden file inside that file which will only show when you enter a second password, otherwise it won't.

You will always have the option to enter inner password even when you don't have hidden inner files, which means, no one can tell that you have inner hidden file if you don't want them to know. just fill some semi secure file in the outer ring and some real secure file you need in the inner ring, when someone force you to give out the password, just give out the outer ring one and say that's it, no inner file if they ask and when they see the files in the outer ring and see that it's something you might wanna protect, they will think they got all they want.

 

Does it need to decrypt the whole image on to the hard drive before giving access to the files inside ? if so, then I'm not interested. I want something that can load images quickly without requiring any hard disk space to extract.

 

I am not sure what you mean, but I will try to give you some idea on how it works, and hope it answer your question.

You first use truecrypt to create an image, which acts as a virtual drive when mounted. How ever big the image you made will be the size of the drive when mounted. before mounting the image, it appears as a file(however you wanted to name it and whatever the file type you want it to be)
You will need password to mount the image, which is a key to make all that random 0 and 1 meaningful. once mounted, it acts just like a usb drive. performs just the same. It's just as fast. encryption and decryption is on the fly, you will not notice any difference from that and a usb drive.

I would go to the site and read a bit on it, since I find that the best encryption software out there. I am sure you will like it. http://www.truecrypt.org/
since it's free, you have nothing to loose, and there is a traveler mode which means you don't really need to install anything, just need a usb key.

Did I mention that it's very secure as you have the option to create hidden volume and you can use extra password like password + any file or directory as authentication......

edit: some linebreak and additional info

I just realize what you might be asking. It doesn't need to be extracted, it act just like acronis virtual drive when you give it password, it will be mounted, takes very little time to mount. It's NOT like winrar or any zip programs.