Win7 Pro encryption?
 

I've got a Windows 7 Pro laptop & need to get data on it encrypted, namley two databases & an Outlook data file (don't see any need for whole disk, but don't really know). Due to some applications on the laptop there isn't currently the option to move on from Win7. As Win7 Pro has no form of system or included encryption, I guess that I'll be looking for something aftermarket. My main concerns are;

Performance overheads - one of the DB's in use is pretty large & not the smartest & i would prefer not to have to deal with any noticable impact on performance.

As I don't know much about the subject I'm mildly concerned about "locking myself out"

Edit:- if it makes any odd's, it got TPM (Discrete TPM 1.2 / Firmware TPM2.0) & fingerprint reader.

Any advice much appreciated.

Windows 7 Pro does have Encrypting File System (EFS), which may do what you need as it's specifically to encrypt individual files & folders, not whole disks (that would be Bitlocker, which Win7 Pro doesn't have). It would be better than nothing, but might not fit with how you use the files.

SD

EFS is greyed out / unavailable despite disks being on NTFS.

From the aftermarket products available do you know if there is "type" that is less likely to degrade performance than others?



Thanks.

If you have Win 7 Pro and the disk is NTFS, then EFS should be available.

From an administrative command line (right click on command prompt and Run as administrator), run: fsutil behavior query DisableEncryption
If = 1, then it has been disabled, if = 0 then there is some other reason it's greyed out.
If = 1, enable by running fsutil behavior set DisableEncryption 0 then reboot

Do you have an SSD? You might find that it supports hardware disk encryption, but it's not easy to get that working under Win7 - https://github.com/Drive-Trust-Alliance/sedutil/wiki

SD

Thanks people.