How to hide a folder on your computer. Three ways to hide personal files from strangers on your computer

It is a common practice that several people use one computer, one OS, and even one account. It could be a home computer or a workplace, but everyone has the right to personal space.

After all, if a child is also a PC user, then there will probably be files on the computer that it is better for him not to get into. Today we will talk about how to hide these files.

How to hide files on Windows 7

Microsoft has given users the ability to hide files and folders. Fortunately for Us, this is quite easy to do. To simplify the task, it is best to put all the necessary content (files) into one separate folder. And already conduct experiments with her. To hide a file follow these steps.

Right-click on the required folder and click “Properties”;
Check the “Hidden” checkbox and apply to all subfolders, then “Apply”;
After that, go to the “Control Panel”;
Select the “Folder Options” section;
In the “View” tab, find the “Hidden files and folders” item;

Now, no one will be able to see your hidden files until you enable the “Show hidden files, folders and drives” option. Once enabled, hidden folders will be displayed with transparent icons.

For greater reliability, you can name the folder, disguising it as a program or system folder, for example: Adobe files, Microsoft files, Explorer files, and so on. Accordingly, do not forget to put the files in the appropriate places, such as Program Files.

What should I do if not all hidden files are shown?

Friends, I completely agree with you, it sounds quite strange. But as a person who constantly tinkers with computers, I can tell you with confidence that sometimes you want to clean your computer of unnecessary, old files, you go into the settings and activate the “show hidden files and folders” option, but for some reason not all of them are shown.

The first thing we do is freak out and leaf through all available folders in search of what is missing. It is usually detected at the stage of measuring the weight of all folders, that is, we look at the amount of occupied space on the local disk and see, for example, 10 GB of occupied space there. We open the hard drive, measure the weight of all subfolders and get only 7 GB, which begs the question: where did the remaining 3 GB go? Have they evaporated? Of course not, it’s just that the remaining files that you and I don’t see are system files and are hidden by default so that we don’t accidentally cause trouble in our operating system. Remember, these files are hidden for a reason, and for your own safety, careless actions with these folders and files can lead to damage.

Now closer to the point, in order to see all the folders, you need to repeat the steps from the first part of the article, go to point No. 6 and in it, in addition to selecting the “Do not show hidden files, folders and drives” option, you need to look a little higher and uncheck the lines “hide protected system files”.

We apply the settings again and now all system files will be available to you. This will allow you to better clean the system of debris, but I remind you that if you don’t know what you can touch there, then don’t go there until everything is broken.

If you are faced with the question “How to find hidden files on your computer?”, then follow the instructions in reverse, that is, in “Folder Options” make them visible and start searching for the “unknown”.

Let's look at how to hide a folder in Windows 7 and 10, as well as find hidden materials and view their contents.

Hiding files and folders in the operating system is a reliable way to hide important information or protect it from accidental damage or deletion.

The function is useful in the following cases:

Several users use the same computer at once;
You need to temporarily hide information on your PC;
You don't want to clutter your desktop with shortcuts.

Hiding a folder on a Windows computer

Developers from Microsoft have provided the ability to hide . This function is primarily necessary to prevent users from deleting important system files and libraries.

Can configure the display of hidden folders and files. There are also third-party applications to work with this function.

Method 1 – Standard Explorer

The essence of the first method is to use standard Windows Explorer. Its settings provide the ability to manually select what information can be displayed in the system and what information should be hidden from the eyes of other users.

Follow the instructions for Windows 7, 10:

Go to the Computer Control Panel;
Select the view type “Large icons”;
In the list, find the “Explorer Options” field and open it;

In the new window, go to the “View” tab;
The Advanced Options area displays all the options for displaying File Explorer menus and folders and files in the operating system. Scroll down the list to the “Hidden folders and files” option;
Check "Do not show..." and save the settings.

After setting up Explorer, you can mark the desired folders as hidden. To do this, follow these steps:

Create a folder on your desktop or in another directory and fill it with the necessary files, which will be the hidden contents of the folder;
Right-click on the object and select “Properties” from the action options;
In the “General” tab, check the “Hidden” attribute and save the settings.

If the system does not prohibit showing hidden items, users will see important system files, temporary documents of open programs, and files that have been manually designated as hidden. The icons for these folders and shortcuts will be dimmer than usual, so they can be easily identified among other data.

The method described above will help hide hidden folders in Windows 10. The instructions for Windows 7 will be similar, since the Explorer settings interface is identical in both versions of the OS.

Method 2 – Free Hide Folder Utility

For more convenient interaction with hidden elements, it is better to use special programs. Free Hide Folder is one such utility. It is free and compatible with all versions of Windows.

Let's take a closer look at how to work with hidden files and folders in Windows using Hide Folder. The program interface is very simple, but is presented only in English.

Follow the instructions to hide the directory:

Open the program window and click on the “Add” button;
An explorer window will appear in which you need to select a folder to hide;
After this, the path to the directory will be displayed in the main application window. In the list form you will see all the folders that are currently hidden;
To remove a folder, find its name in the program, right-click on this field and select “Unhide Folder” in the list of actions.

Other features:

Creating a backup of the contents of hidden folders;
Ability to set a password for a directory;
Using strong encryption algorithms that make it as difficult as possible for content hidden on your computer to be hacked.

Method 3 – Transparent folder

Hidden folders in Windows 7, 10 can be created not only by changing the properties of files and directories. One of the simplest methods is to customize the appearance of the folder, as a result of which it becomes invisible.

Follow the instructions:

Determine which folder you want to hide and right-click on it;
Select "Properties";

In a new window, open the “Settings” tab;
Click on “Change icon”;

Next, a list will appear with a preview of all the icons that are available in the system. Among them there are also invisible ones. Find one of them and set it as the folder image;
Save your changes.

You must enter special invisible characters as the directory name. They appear when you simultaneously press the Alt key combination of numbers 255. The final view of the folder is shown in the figure below. As you can see, it can be selected, but during normal interaction with the desktop it is not visible.

The disadvantages of this method are that Explorer still displays the directory, even though it does not have an icon or name. Also, another user may discover the folder if they decide to select all the items on the desktop or in another directory at the same time.

Method 4 – How to hide a folder in a picture

Another method of hiding folders is radically different from all those described above. It involves the use of basic steganography techniques - the science of classifying the very fact that secret data exists.

If you have a folder with secret files and you don't want anyone else to see it, you can follow these steps:

Archive the directory - ZIP or RAR formats are suitable;
Next, select any image and place it along with the created archive in a new folder;

Next, open a command prompt. This can be done by simultaneously pressing the WinR buttons and entering the CMD command;

In the command prompt window that opens, run the folder using the command cd c:\MySecrets\;
Next, enter the command COPY /B image.jpg + MySecrets.rar SecImage.jpg, where IMAGE is the initial image you selected, MySecrets is the archive, SecImage is the new final image in which the information will be hidden;
To execute the command, press Enter.

After repeating the above steps, you can test the result of the work. Open the final file SecImage.jpg - you will see the first image you selected. At the same time, if you open this document using an archiver or change the resolution from JPEG to RAR, you will still have access to the archive and will be able to view the contents.

The advantage of this method is that a potential attacker is unlikely to realize that the system uses this method of hiding information. In addition, it is very difficult to identify exactly which picture the archive is hidden in, while all other methods are quite easy to deactivate.

Finding hidden elements

If you want to check if there are hidden objects on your computer that other users have created, you can use the built-in OS features to find the hidden folder or file.

Activating showing hidden folders

The easiest way to show hidden folders in Windows is to use the Explorer settings window already mentioned above. Open “File Explorer Options” and in the advanced settings, check the “Show hidden folders” box:

How to find an invisible folder

To find an invisible folder on the desktop, press the CtrlA key combination. This will allow you to select all the elements and find out if there are invisible objects in the system. You can search for folders in Explorer in the same way.

Hidden folders on a flash drive

After connecting the flash drive to the computer, it becomes part of the operating system Explorer, so its contents will be affected by all the parameters set in Windows. To open hidden folders in Windows on a flash drive, just change the advanced settings of Explorer to “Show hidden files”, as already described above.

You can only secure the contents of a flash drive using programs that set a password on a USB drive:

TrueCrypt is a free program for encrypting the entire contents of a flash drive, the volume of which is more than 2GB;
Rohos Mini Drive – the ability to encrypt not the entire flash drive, but only individual directories or files;
MyFolder – protects content on flash drives and OS root folders.

Bottom line

Now you know about all the possible ways to hide a folder in Windows or how to find and open it. If you have not previously encountered setting up invisible folders, we recommend that you first use the standard Explorer settings.

For users who need to constantly hide information, we recommend working with the Free Hide Folder utility or hiding the directory in a picture. This increases the chances that the information will remain confidential, even if someone deliberately tries to find the folder.

Or why protecting data through encryption is better than simply hiding folders in Windows.

Briefly: There are many programs on the Internet for hiding individual folders and files from other computer users. These programs offer a simple method for hiding folders by filtering requests to the file system. But this does not mean 100% data protection.

In fact, hidden files and folders can be seen and viewed using other means. If more reliable protection is required, disk encryption programs should be used.

How to hide a folder or file - the standard way

One of the biggest desires of the user is often the desire to hide his personal documents, programs and other data somewhere away from prying eyes. The most common way to do this is:

Use programs to hide files and folders. There are quite a lot of them now: Folder Lock, Hide Folders XP
Use standard tools in Windows: mark the folder/file as hidden, or deny access to the folder/file by specifying the rights to access the object.

Directories and files marked as “hidden” in Windows are not visible in Explorer to other system users if the user has the flag enabled: Do not show hidden folders
Visible in programs: FAR, Total Commander, etc., which do not use a standard dialog to display files and folders.

We intentionally left out EFS (Windows 2000/XP's built-in encryption) because setting up this feature requires significant effort and expertise.

The convenience of these methods of hiding folders is that you don't have to do anything extra to hide them. Everything is quite simple: just one click of the mouse is enough to hide a particular folder/file, regardless of its size. But what are the disadvantages of this type of program? Let's try to figure it out.

What is the degree of protection?

Not all utilities for hiding folders will reliably hide your data. Moreover, even fewer of them, in addition to hiding them, will reliably protect them with encryption from various techniques. Many of these programs hide folders and files for only one operating system. What if there are several operating systems installed on the PC? From one system the data will not be visible, but from the other - everything is at your fingertips!

Simply hiding folders and restricting access to files does not help in the following cases:

Booting a PC on a different operating system or loading another OS from CD-ROM. For example Linux Live CD, Windows Live CD.
- in another OS that connects to your HDD, all files will be visible, since there will be no restrictions or protection.

Remove HDD drive and connect it to another Computer.
If you remove the hard drive (HDD drive) and connect it to another computer, you can see and open all hidden folders and files. Even those folders to which access is prohibited (on an NTFS disk) will be visible.

There is another opportunity to view files hidden by various programs. To do this, you must have Administrator rights (Account with Administrator powers). Because if you are a system administrator, you can uninstall programs to hide folders, or boot into crash protection mode, and then all hidden objects will become visible.

Enhanced data protection - through Encryption

How to get around all the obstacles mentioned above?

One method of protecting data is to encrypt it. Everything is quite simple. You select the data you need and assign a password to access it. If only you know the password, then only you will get access to the information!

To further increase the reliability of data storage, it is encrypted. That is, using special encryption algorithms, they transform the data in such a way that even if the file is opened, it will be impossible to read it - it will be a mess. To convert the “porridge” into normal data, they are decrypted using the same encryption algorithm.

Encryption allows you to:
Hide folders and files from prying eyes (or other users of the same computer). And also Protect data from viewing using the methods listed above and other “power” attacks.

Rohos Disk Encryption program: encrypts and hides

As practice shows, the greatest reliability of information storage is achieved by combining several methods of protection. It was this path that was chosen when creating the Rohos Disk Encryption program.

The program works according to the following principles:

All data is stored on a separate virtual disk that the program creates. This disk is stored on your PC or USB flash drive. The disk is encrypted using high-speed encryption, that is, “on the fly”, directly during operation. This disk is called .
After finishing working with files, you disconnect the disk. The drive itself and all information stored on it become inaccessible until the drive is turned on again. The disk consists of one file, which is equal in size to the disk space. This file can be seen, but it is encrypted, so information cannot be extracted from it.
Allows you to hide and encrypt individual folders and applications on your PC, such as Skype, Firefox, Chrome.

How to hide a folder using Rohos Disk Encryption:

First, in the Rohos Mini Drive program (free) or Rohos Disk Encryption, you need to create your encrypted virtual disk R:.

In the Hide Folder dialog box, select predefined folders, such as My Documents, Profiles folders Skype and other programs.

Or specify the Folder manually by clicking on the “...” button.

Hello, friends!
How to hide a folder in Windows 7? Why do I need this, you ask? I don't have any secrets.

Perhaps, but nevertheless, knowing how to do this may be useful to you in the future. In this instruction we will look at the simplest method without using additional software.

To hide a folder, we do not need to install additional programs; standard Windows operating system tools are sufficient.

In Windows 7, there is the concept of a “file and folder attribute”. A folder attribute is an additional property of a folder. To hide a folder, we will change its attribute.

By the way, you can not only hide a folder, but also put a password on it. I described how to do this in the article “Putting a password on the folder. Dirlock program. You can read this article. In addition, you can hide folders using personal information software.

How to change a folder attribute?

To change the attribute, you need to select this folder > right-click on it and select the item at the very bottom properties. The → “Folder Properties” window will appear.

On the “General” tab, change the attribute; Check the “hidden” box. The folder magically disappears!

Or it will not disappear, but will become transparent, if in the “Folder Option” on the “View” tab it is specified: “show hidden files and folders”. Now you should go to: Start > Control Panel > Folder Options > View tab.

We are interested in the “Hidden files and folders” section. If the folder itself has the “hide” attribute, and the folder option > “do not show hidden folders”, then your folder will become invisible.

If you want to make the folder visible again, then select “show hidden files and folders” and return to your folder, which will become transparent. Right-click > select properties, and remove the “hide” attribute → the folder is visible again. That's all, don't forget to subscribe. See you in new articles!

Often, users of different versions of the Windows operating system need to hide any individual directory with files. This can be done using several methods at once, which we will discuss later in this article.

First of all, it is important to make a reservation that we have already partially touched on the topic of hiding folders and files in Windows OS in some other articles. It is for this reason that below we will provide links to the relevant instructions.

As part of the main instructions, we will touch on different versions of the Windows operating system. At the same time, know that in fact, none of the OS versions, starting with the seventh, have any particularly strong differences from other editions.

Method 1: Hiding Directories in Windows 7

As we previously mentioned, we will touch on the process of hiding folders on various editions of the Windows operating system. However, even taking this approach into account, the recommendations are quite applicable not only to the considered version, but also to others.

Before moving on to solving the issue, it is important to mention that any directory can be hidden using exactly the same methods as files. Thus, this instruction applies equally to any possible documents, be they applications or media recordings.

You can hide any directory, regardless of how full it is.

An exception to the general rules for using the directory hiding functionality are system folders. This applies to both later and earliest versions of Windows.

In the article below, we will talk about how you can hide any kind of data using several different methods. This is especially true for those methods in which special programs may be involved.

Please note that for experienced users, system tools can be significantly expanded through active use of the command line. With its help, you can perform accelerated data hiding using just some operating system commands.

This is the end of the Windows 7 operating system.

Method 2: Hiding folders in Windows 10

Especially for people using Windows version ten, we have also prepared instructions on hiding folders and clarifying all the side details. At the same time, know that it is equally suitable for users not only of Windows 10, but also of its predecessor.

In the above article, we touched upon the possibility of using third-party software developed by independent developers specifically to simplify the process of managing a computer and, in particular, hiding various types of data. Moreover, in order to try everything yourself, you do not have to purchase the necessary software, since it is supplied completely free of charge.

It is important to make a reservation that if there are many files and folders in the hidden directory, then the process of hiding them may require additional time. In this case, the speed of data processing directly depends on the hard drive used and some other characteristics of the computer.

Hidden folders will instantly visually disappear from the parent directory.

If you want to view them, use the top control panel.

We discussed the process of displaying files in more detail in a special article on the website.

Each directory in whose properties the checkbox is checked "Hidden", will stand out among other folders due to the transparency of the icon.

For fairly experienced users, detecting hidden information is not a problem. This is especially true for system tools in absolutely any Windows distribution.

In general, as you can see, hiding folders and files using basic and other operating system Explorer tools is extremely simple.

Method 3: Use third-party programs

Under some circumstances, you, as a Windows OS user, may need a more reliable tool for hiding file directories, which special programs can help with. In this section of the article, we will touch on software created to help users hide folders.

Programs often run independently of system tools. Thus, due to the removal of previously installed software, all hidden data will be visible again.

Moving directly to the essence of this method, it is important to make a reservation that in the previous methods discussed we have already touched on some programs for the corresponding purpose. However, their range is not limited to the mentioned software and therefore you may be interested in some other equally relevant applications.

Typically, programs for hiding folders require you to enter and remember a secret key for later access to information.

If necessary, just as in the case of folders, you can process various documents.

Some programs support a simplified control model by dragging and dropping hidden material into the work area. This can be useful if you need to hide several folders that are independent from each other.

Among other things, the software allows you to use an increased level of security by setting passwords for files and folders.

You can hide a folder, among other things, using a special item added when installing programs and placed in the Explorer context menu.

Guided by the presented list of actions, you can hide literally any directory without any problems, regardless of how full it is. However, you should not use this software to hide system files and folders, so as not to encounter errors and difficulties in the future.

Conclusion

To conclude this article, it is important to mention that you can combine the presented methods, thereby providing reliable protection for personal directories. At the same time, when using the program, do not forget about the password, the loss of which can become a problem for a novice user.

Do not forget that some folders can be hidden in the simplest way by turning off hidden files in the system settings.

We hope you were able to understand the basic intricacies of hiding file directories in the Windows operating system environment.