SafeHouse Explorer

Hiding files in a deep folders structure, to protect them from prying eyes, is what an amateur would do. If you want to secure your confidential data, you should look for a professional solution, such as SafeHouse Explorer. The application allows you to store your private files in highly encrypted and password-protected vaults, which can be mounted as virtual drives in Windows Explorer, but not without the correct password. The virtual drives can be customized without any effort and mounted almost instantly. You can make them as large as your hard drive permits and use them to protect any files, regardless of size or format.

SafeHouse Explorer is distributed as a full and completely free application, which means that you won't encounter any kind of restricted functions or reminders to upgrade to a paid version. You can use it on Windows XP or any later version, up to Windows 8. The application doesn't ask for too many resources or any supplementary tools and it can be installed in a few moments. What's more, the application can be used from a USB flash drive, on any computer.

The user interface looks and feels like a standard explorer window, on which you can browse through a virtual volume's contents. A toolbar presents a few options, for creating new volumes, opening existing ones or closing them and for performing other basic actions. Volumes can be created by following a wizard's simple instructions. Besides naming a volume and typing a short description, you can define its size, in Kilobytes, Megabytes or Gigabytes, make it resizable and pre-initialize it with random data. Of course, you will also need to type and re-type a password.

Virtual volumes are saved as single files on the hard drive and they can be mounted automatically, once created. You can access a mounted volume and populate it with data in Windows Explorer, but you can also drag and drop the files directly over the application's user interface, for the same effect. When your files are stored safely in a vault, you may close it instantly, with a single click.

As previously suggested, volumes are impossible to mount without the correct passwords. Besides the fact that your files will be encrypted, they will be hidden as well. Entire Gigabytes of data can be compacted into a single, heavily encrypted file. Once you open a vault, you can browse through its contents, on the application's interface, just like in Windows Explorer and extract one or more files if you need to.