File Share Encryption

Hello.

I have installed PGP WDE on my laptop (which is running Windows 7).

Since installation I have created a "virtual disk" which is where I would like to store all of my files that need to be encrypted. This is not doing anything. No matter if the disk is mounted or not I can always access all files in the folder without a password or anything. When the disk is not mounted the disk is not visible or accessable, but the folder is. When the disk is mounted I can see the disk, however there is always an "access denied" error when trying to access the disk and I am unbable to access it, but I can access the folder.

Please help. I would like to avoid encrypting my WHOLE computer. I have not tried this and I do not want to do this.

Thanks.

Are you mounting the Virtual Disk as a drive or as a folder?  If you are mounting it as a folder, the folder you are mounting to must be completely empty of any files.

How are you doing the mounting?

Are you still having difficulty with this?

Thank you so much for the response! I appreciate it so much! Sorry for not responding sooner. 

I am not sure how I am mounting it. I am just mounting it. I just clicked the mount button. Sorry, I am new to this whole thing. Here are the steps I took:

1. I created a folder. This was the folder that I wanted to house all the files I wanted encrypted.

2. Create a virtual disk using that folder

3. Mount the disk

4. Try to access the disk (from the 'my computer' area) - does not work, it says access denied.

5. Try to access the folder - does work. I can open the folder, put stuff in the folder, etc.

6. Unmount the disk - the disk does disappear and I cannot access it. I can still access the folder.

7. I can put stuff in the folder and mount and unmount the disk and anything in the folder is alwasy visible, accessable and not encrypted.

I can retry doing this just to make sure I do not have anything in the folder when I create the disk. However I have tried doing this various ways and the end result is always the same: I cannot access the virtual disk (access denied error) and I can always access the folder and nothing is encrypted.

Any other thoughts/suggestions/fixes?

Thanks again, so much!

Thank you so much for the response! I appreciate it so much! Sorry for not responding sooner. 

I'm not sure that we are communicating on this.  To try to make sure:

You make a new folder.

You always leave the folder completely empty - never put anything into it, not even the Virtual Disk container file. 

You create a Virtual disk set to mount to that folder.  But you do not put the Virtual Disk file itself in that folder.

When mounted, you can place files into the mounted virtual disk, by placing them in the folder.

When you unmount the Virtual Disk, the folder will show as being completely empty.

You still must not ever put anything into that folder when the Virtual Disk is not mounted to it.

Thanks for the tips! I apprecaite your response so much!

When the virtual disk is mounted we are unable to access it. I go to My Computer --> from there I see the Virtual Disk (when it is mounted). When I click on the disk it says, "Access Denied". And we can't even open it to try to use it. I guess this is the biggest problem because we cannot use the virtual disk to see if it is working.

I'd suggest changing its mount location, such as changing it to drive L: on your local hard disk.  Make sure the passphase is not cached, which can be done with PGPtray-Clear Caches, or by rebooting.  Then double click on the Virual Disk file to mount it.  Before entering your passphrase, click the Options button and set the new location.

I will try this and hopefully it works. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it so much!