Don’t you sometimes really hate it when you can’t have some privacy on your own computer? I know I do. I really don’t like people butting into my personal space and finding out things I really don’t want them to find out. And the Windows hidden folder isn’t a solution, since nowadays everyone knows about setting up Windows Explorer to show hidden files.

I started searching the web for applications that would hide my private folders. The free software (Invisible Security 1.2, Hide Folder Now 1.5) I found on the internet have only one tiny little bug. They don’t actually hide my folders! The folders are hidden from view in Windows Explorer, but they forgot to add Total Commander to the list. With Total Commander the folders are still visible, only the names of the folders have changed (ex. The app. renamed the “hidden” videos folder to videosHIDDEN123456).

For users who use only Windows Explorer, the folders hidden with these programs are hidden from view. But I use Total Commander a lot (and so do the people who use my computer), so I guess this solution to hide my folders is off the list.

I found a solution that requires some manual work, but it is compatible with the configuration I have.  The solution is Alternate Data Streams (ADS) and it was introduced with Windows NT and NTFS file systems. So you need to have an NTFS partition to pull this off.

With ADS, you can stream files into each other. We will need a file in which we will hide all the private data. I will use a notepad. The command for creating a notepad in command line is the following:

echo The text of the notepad goes here>private.txt

To create an invisible text document in the private.txt text file, type in the following:

echo This is the hidden content>private.txt:hidden.txt

An invisible hidden.txt document will be created within private.txt. If you check the content of private.txt you will see it didn’t change, and neither did the size of the private.txt file, so there’s no reason to suspect that files are hidden in this file. To access the hidden document, type

notepad private.txt:hidden.txt

You can hide almost any file in the private.txt text document. Just use echo, give the path and name of the file to be hidden, and the path of the file where it will be hidden. If you want to hide a movie from drive C to a file on drive E, just

echo "c:\Jim Carrey - Vanilla Ice.avi"> e:\private.txt:jim.avi

The command for playing the video with Windows Media Player is:

"c:\program files\windows media player\wmplayer.exe" "e:\private.txt:jim.avi”

Type the absolute path of the application that will start the hidden file, and the path of the hidden file.

Since you can’t count on Windows support for ADS, you need to download an extra tool, “cat”, to suck data back up from the ADS. The tool is available on http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

To retrieve the original files from the ADS, use the cat command, followed by the file to be unhidden and the path where the file will be extracted.

cat “private.txt:jim.avi”>”c:\movies\jim.avi”

Basically, what ADS does, is it uses the text file as a folder. But when starting the text file, Windows will only display the content of the text file, and won’t show the files stored behind it. The files hidden in Alternate Data Streams will be inaccessible for every user.

Comments (1)

	1. 25-11-2008 16:01
	delete of parent file what will happen if i delete the file private.txt? will i delete jim.avi as well (when it's still hidden in it) or will jim.avi stuck somewhere and i will lose disk space forever (or untill formated)? Guest Report

peter

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