21st January 2002
When I wanted to stay over at Jimmy's house, I had to ask for permission. When I wanted to have ice cream after supper, I had to ask for permission. When I wanted to open and edit my wife's documents, I didn't have to ask for permission. She was using an unsecure system! Thank goodness for FAT32, eh? We receive countless e-mails from people asking how they can password-protect their files and folders. The quickest way to do it is to ZIP up the objects in question, and then place a password on that archive. That's not the most convenient route, however. If there are multiple people using one machine, Windows 2000 and XP make protecting your data infinitely easier. With either on an NTFS hard drive, you can set user-level permissions. Depress ALT while you double-click a file or folder, flip to the Security tab, then set how you want to allow your users to interact with the data. Give 'em full control, the ability to modify, read & execute, read, write, etc. If you're worried about a young one (or novice) deleting your documents, this will help keep your bases covered. In Windows 9x, you'd need to find a third-party utility to do the same thing.