I have a 1tb external sata hard drive attached to my Windows 7 Pro computer and I would like to password protect that drive. Does anyone know of a way to do that?

This article many help you.
https://www.ubackup.com/windows-7/password-protect-usb-drive-windows-7.html
If your version of Windows 7 is Home you would not be able to use the Bit Locker method and would need third party software as described in the article.

_________________

Hi Jay.....My copy of Windows 7 Pro does not have bitlocker so I downloaded the third party software and installed it but had no luck in getting it to work. It is not a program that opens, gives you some instructions and then says next then more instructions and next etc; It opens some very complicated windows with no directions what to click on. I am not interested in encryption and all that, I just want a way to require a password before you can open the drive.

Let's see if there in any input from others as I'm really not well versed in password protecting a drive as I've never done so.

One possibility would be to not actually use a password of the drive but, rather, set all folders on the drive as hidden. Unless someone actually looked at the properties for the drive and the used space showed they would think it an empty drive. The downside with this is that you would have to go to the 'view' settings in file explorer and select to show hidden files/folders every time you wanted to access the drive and set back to not show hidden when done. This would, of course, be rather cumbersome but possibly quicker than having to enter a password.

_________________

The standard for password protecting a drive in Windows is to use Bitlocker. It isn't available in Windows 7 Home, though. Furthermore, it and 3rd party programs that perform similarly to Bitlocker are actually encrypting the contents of the drive. If your password is lost, your data is lost. With Bitlocker, there is a recovery key available that you can store on another drive or with a Microsoft Account to the Cloud. 3rd party software does not have that capability.
There are external USB drives that have hardware password protection, but I have no experience with any.
An option you may wish to consider, though it is potentially cumbersome, is to use 7Zip or WinZip to add the entire contents of the drive to a new password protected zip archive on the drive, and then delete the original files. It means you would need to open the zip file with the password before accessing any files from the archive - extracting them or simply viewing them.
Why, may I ask, are you looking to password protect the drive?
Since it is external, could you simply unplug it and lock it in a drawer or fireproof document box/case?

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Hi Jay....This looks like my most viable option. I was thinking that I could put everything that I transfer to the external drive into a single "New Folder" and then hide that folder. Does it sound realistic that I can do that?

Hi Steve........I never shut my computer down so I was just looking for a fast way to hide files that I don't want others to see. Windows 7 Pro does not have Bitlocker so I was searching for another way to do it.

To be honest I can't find a way to add a password for an external drive without encryption. However the thought of making the entire drive a .zip file with a password for the .zip file may well be viable. You do not need to actually extract such zipped files to access. You would double click on the zipped file and enter the password for access. This should work for individual stand alone files but would fail if other files were needed for the selected file to work.

Steve probably has the best solution as in just getting a lock box to store the externals when not in use.

Another possible option would be if Sandisk still includes software password protection on some of their flash drives. If so it MAY be possible to copy this protection to a hard drive but I really don't know.

What you want to do is just not really a feature in Windows.

_________________

To "hide" select files or folders from view and password protect the process you would want to use a 3rd party program.
https://www.cleanersoft.com/hidefolder/free_hide_folder.htm
I have not used this program, but when trying to search for a program that I used many years ago on XP, I found a link to the above program that was recommended in a forum by a Microsoft MVP that I know. It looks like it may suit your needs.

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Thanks Steve, I will give it a try and let you know how it works out.

Ok guys, I think I have worked this out with two different ways to use it. Going back to Jays suggestion to just hide the files rather than use a password to protect the sata drive, I added a single new file to the drive and named it AllysWorld then I put about 650gb into that one file, then highlighted all 650gb and set it to "hidden". That turned all the files a bit grey looking but they all still worked when clicked on. Then I went to the control panel and clicked on Folder Options and set it to "don't show hidden folders" and AllysWorld and everything in it disappeared from the screen.

Then using the link that Steve gave me, I downloaded free hide folder and what that program does is require a password to open the program and once inside, I was able to click on AllysWorld Folder and either hide it or show it. This program worked ok for me but there were some other users that reported they hid the folder and could not get it back open so before going ahead with it, I am going to copy about 100gb on another sata drive that I have and work with that a while to make sure there are no glitches.

Glad to read that you have a solution and a backup plan for safety.

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Hi Steve......I ran across a video on youtube that describes how to password protect an external drive and it looks like it would work ok but it means entereing the "Command Promt" and making changes to the computer so I was wondering it you would look at the video and let me know if this is a viable option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOeLmr94i5I

What that does is set the attributes for the folder to hidden. And then it uses a batch file (BAT) which is compiled as an EXE file to prompt for a password before opening the view of the contents of the hidden folder in Explorer.
This would fail miserably if the options in Explorer are set to show hidden files and folders...
It is perfectly safe, but not very secure. The drive is actually not password protected. The folder ("test" in the video) is simply a hidden folder.

_________________
stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Thanks Steve, what I am doing now using the method I talked about before seems to work ok but when it is set to show hidden files, the files are all grey and are very hard to read until they are opened. I may move everything to Windows 11 because it has Bitlocker. I have never used it before so may get back to you if I decide to do that.

The reason that the files are grey is that, even though you selected to show hidden files, they are still actually hidden. The grey designates this.

Just keep in mind that, if you go to Windows 11 with the externals, and use Bitlocker, you MAY not be able to use the drives on a system that does not have Bitlocker. Someone MAY correct this view but I believe it to be true. If you want to be able to use the drives on systems that do not have Bitlocker you may do better with third party encryption.

<edit>
To add on there is still the option to make everything on the external a big .ZIP file with a password. As long as this is just data that is in single files it should work well.

_________________

How would I go about creating this big external zip file with a password?

I'm checking out some free software to do this but it will take me a while to prove. The one that I'm currently looking is Express ZIP by NCH software. I'm currently trying on a 7+GB folder to make sure that all works as to what you need in the free version. I will get back with results. Another thing about using a zip format is that it compresses the files which results in more storage space. For example I'm process a 7+GB and the resulting zip file will be more like 4GB.

_________________

Initial results are that it works. My 7+GB folder is still processing after over 4 hours so the initial setup would probably take ages for you but would work once done.

While processing the test folder I did a single image file and did the encryption and password thing and it worked.

_________________

It does work but isn't quick. Zipping a 7.12GB folder pretty much took all night. How much space is used on your external? Unless there is actually little data the time to do this may not be worth it.

If you want to look at what I used here is a link.
https://www.nchsoftware.com/zip/index.html
Should be enough info on the site to get you going if you decide to try. If you do try I would recommend doing one folder at a time instead of the entire drive.

_________________

Hi Jay, I have 709GB's of used space on a 2TB external drive so it does not look like a workable plan. I did download the app and will give it a try on smaller files. Thanks for your help.

Ya, it would probably take you a week to process that much data. I also found that I didn't like the interface of the app as to how it displayed the file structure of a zipped file.

I had also never zipped anything so large and didn't realize how long it would take. An interesting idea that just isn't really applicable for what you want.

Way back Steve probably had the best idea as in just getting a small lock box and locking up the drive.

_________________