Is there a way to password protect a file on your hard drive so any other user account on your computer can access it with the password but none without; and without compressing the file? like say D:My FilesPersonal_Files

A good investment is a external drive and/or jumpdrive or even both. 500G runs about $99.00 & a 32G jumpdrive is around$45-50 and a 64G runs around $124.00 here's a little information on these items: If you want to put security on a jumpdrive no problem, or the external drive either and at least these item can be put in a safe or taken with you to another PC. These two web sites are safe and good software. http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/ just type what your looking for in search box or look though list. http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/downloads.html just type what your looking for in blue area search box and new pages open, you will see software that is FREE, shareware and trial so look careful. DATA LOSS PREVENTION CD, DVD, jump drives and external drives all would be considered Data loss prevention tools for a PC CD/DVD-life span depends on the type of CD/DVD http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_dvd_life.html (Gold label is the best has long life span) Jump drive- life span -> Erase cycles >= 100,000 -> Device life in storage > 10 years. -> Data retention with no power > 10 years baring erasure due to radiation or "other" effects. External drive life span- Depends on if you leave drive plugged in all the time on just when needed, the span can be around 10 yrs. many people download information and unplug and even put unit in a safe when not using.

yes there are a few different programs that create a virtual drive out of a folder and put a password on that drive. (um trying to find its name) rolls 3 on search check: fail. well Google it I guess I know there is a at least one freeware one out on the webs.

XP Controls access through group rights. Assuming its NTFS, You should be able to Right-click on a folder and see a tab called "Security". CLick on it and edit security settings such that only you or a certain group (which you would have to create) can see it. This is the closest thing I can think of now that isnt archiving. BTW, YOu can use programs like winzip etc, withOUT compresing... it becomes an uncompressed archive.

Further details: I am looking for a way to password lock a folder on a second hard drive, so other users can't access it without the password, BUT in the event I suffer a fatal system crash and have to reinstall windows in C: then i can still access the file in D: with the new system as long as i have the password. this is because i have lost a large block of data before because it was encrypted and in "My Documents" when i lost my O.S. and installed the hard drive as a "slave" in a new system, i was able to recover the non-encrypted data outside the "My Documents" folder but nothing inside it. i want to secure my sensitive data but i don't want to loose it if something goes wrong. also although i back up to Data DVD regularly, i make many alterations between back ups which i don't want to have to redo.

if your hard drive is formated as an NTFS you can, i dont remember how right now though