On 7/19/2018 6:52 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Jo-Anne
writes:
[]
Thank you, John. One other question: Someone pointed out that password
protection of folders and files won't work if the disk is moved to
another operating system. As far as I can tell, 7-zip is primarily for
Windows, with something also for Linux. If the program won't run on
other OS's, would the password protection remain?

If you use a scheme which controls _access_ to files/folders with a
password, but doesn't actually encrypt the files themselves (the data in
them), then indeed it won't be protected if the disc is read on a system
that allows access to them another way.

The zip file format itself is understood by various OSs - IIRR it
predates Windows. And the encryption available _does_ encrypt the actual
data, not just controls access to it - though to varying difficulties,
depending what you use to create them; see VanguardLH's post. I don't
know if 7-zip is Windows only, but if it is, there will certainly be
utilities capable of zipping and unzipping zip files on other systems -
but of course only if you know the password. If I read VLH's post
correctly, not all of such utilities offer the most robust encryption.
(So presumably if you use one that uses the best encryption to create
the zip file, and then try to recover the data using one of the weaker
utilities - whether on the same OS or a different one - you won't succeed.)

Thank you again, John.

--
Jo-Anne