How to use Win 7's own file encryption tool

        Encrypting private files is a habit of many friends. There are many third-party software for file encryption, but in fact, Windows 7 (hereafter referred to as Win7) can complete file encryption by using VHD and BitLocker functions. Create a VHD file to prepare for encryption

Our idea is very simple. Use the VHD function to create a virtual hard disk in the system, then encrypt it with BitLocker, and then save our privacy file in this. "Encrypted disk".

VHD is a virtual disk file of Microsoft Virtual PC. In Win7 system, we can create and mount VHD separately. The role of VHD has been mentioned many times before, so I will not repeat it here. Create a VHD file under Win7.

Right click on "Computer" and select "Manage". In "Computer Management", we click on "Disk Management" and right click on "Create VHD" (Figure 1). Click "Browse" here or enter the path of the VHD we want to create, such as C:cw.vhd. After the determination, fill in the size of the virtual hard disk, the size can be determined according to the available space of the hard disk and its own needs, and other options can be selected by default. Once determined, the system will begin to create a new disk. On the Disk Management page, we can see this newly created disk that is displayed as "unknown". Right click and select "Initialize Disk", then we can partition in this unallocated disk. Right-click on "New Simple Volume", partition in the dialog box that appears, or continue to "Next" until it is completed. At this point, our task of creating a VHD is complete. But we have this VHD, and others can still access the VHD we created. So why should we not let others visit?

Encrypting Disks with BitLocker

Here we are coming out with the "key person" that completes the encryption task - BitLocker. BitLocker is a data encryption function that has been added since Vista. In Win7, we can easily use this function for disk encryption.

In the Explorer, select the VHD partition we just created, right click and enable BitLocker. In the pop-up dialog box, select "Use password to unlock the drive", enter the password, click Next, in the next step, select "Save recovery key to file", so as not to accidentally forget the password, and finally click "Start" Encryption, the encryption task is complete. After a long process of encryption, the created VHD really became our own encrypted disk, and now we can put personal privacy files inside. In the future, when you want to use the privacy file, you only need to mount the VHD file to the system through the “Additional VHD” in the right-click menu in the disk management. Since the password is required to access the disk after mounting, this achieves encryption. the goal of.

Using only the functions of the Windows 7 system, you can complete file encryption. Is it convenient?