Although the security options are available, how many of us bother to set up multiple accounts on our family computer? We’ll have one account and then let our kids access the same data, browser and other information that we use to edit work documents, at home. We also do not protect any of this data so it’s easy for it to get in to the wrong hands. What happens if your kids turn off your firewall then leave you unprotected whilst your computer is left online?

The answer is to turn a section of your drive in to a protected and encrypted area that is only accessible if you know the password required to access the drive. This might not apply to an internal drive. There’s no reason why you couldn’t use your 160GB Classic iPod as a portable USB drive and then protected a section of this drive that is only accessible by yourself, when connected to your computer.

Steganos Safe One is a free tool that you can use to create an encrypted drive partition on an internal or external drive. If you can’t remember your password, why not use an image instead, which is far easier to remember? Either way, your contents will be encrypted and protected from intruders or unauthorised users.

Note that the free Steganos Safe One is limited to two 1GB encrypted drives.