AAM: Creating a Password Protected Folder

A question that doesn’t come up too often but is still a great one to ask none-the-less - encrypted folders, how do create you ‘em?

While most people are happy with having their accounts password protected, or even going a step further by having FileVault in place, there’s always one or two that only want certain individual folders encrypted. Other than downloading some third-party software to create an encrypted zip-archive, OS X has a rather primitive yet completely effective method for creating password protected folders, or shall I say, disk images?

Disk Utility is your secret weapon in this instance which allows you to create a disk image and give it AES-128 encryption. While it may not be the exact answer Haye321 is looking for, it’s as close as OS X offers at this point. After creating a disk image, simple move files to and from in order to keep them safe. The only downfall of this method is that once you’ve set the password, you’ll never need to enter it again, so long as you’re logged in as you. Good luck, Haye.

Whilst this is the last AM before the festive season hits us, it’s not the last AM of the year (that’s for next week folks), so please keep those questions and answers coming in and we’ll see if we can make our last AM of 2006 go out with a bang.

To everyone, have a lovely holiday. Whether you celebrate Chanukah, Christmas or neither, be safe, enjoy the company, but most of all, enjoy the food.

All the best!

Question Of The Week

Creating a Password Protected Folder

Question by: Haye321

I was wondering if anyone here knew how to create a folder that required a password to access.

Answer by: Aaron Wright

I was going to suggest using FileVault but that actually encrypts your entire home folder in a special disk image - then I got to thinking, why not create a disk image with encryption and put your special folder in there? Works just as well and only the user that created it (you) can access it in the future - anyone else will just be prompted to enter a password.

To do this, go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.

Disk Utility should then load and the first thing you’ll notice by default is your Macintosh hard-drive sitting there (and any other disk images you may have running at the time).

At the top next to ‘Burn’ click on ‘New Image’.

In the ‘save as’ field, type the name of the disk image, followed by selecting where you want to save the disk image to.

The next section asks what size to create it (if it’s just a few documents then 40MB will be enough), followed by encryption (which you should select as AES-128). Keep is as Read/Write and then hit okay. You’ll then be prompted to enter the password you wish to access this disk image at a later date - do so but keep the password safe, obviously.

Now the only problem I’ve found with this is that once you’ve entered the password, you’re never asked to enter it again, even when you’ve logged out (I’ve not tried shutting down). Whilst this makes sense and does stop other Users from accessing your disk image, if someone else were to use your Username then they’d still be able to see in - although I suppose you could just tell them to get on their bike and use their own account in the future.

Hope that helps.

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