Written By:
Date Posted: August 27, 2001

Security is a big issue nowadays. Actually, it's always been a concern to many users. If you were afraid of getting robbed, you get an alarm system and the biggest dog you can buy. Others use infrared sensors or security cameras. Even if someone were to infiltrate your home or office, you do little things to make life hard for the crooks, like bolting things down, or using anti-theft steel cabling to latch onto devices. Industrial espionage is a problem, and some users need several security cards just to get into the computer room.

Now, we're not going to go that far for our home PC. In my opinion, everyone should have a personal firewall, and some kind of router. With broadband Internet, it just gets easier everyday to steal a person's info right off their PC. Despite the number of Windows 2000 security exploits announced daily, fact is, Windows 2000 is probably the most secure OS released by Microsoft. You have to configure it though, and not everyone knows how. There are a few things to do, but today, I'm going to explain NTFS (NT File System).

In a nutshell, Windows NT and 2000 can allow you to set file level security. This is especially useful if you share a computer with another user. How this works is that you can set a file you created to only be read, changed, or deleted by you. Useful if you want to hide your porn from your parents.

Windows NT/2000 is also secure in another way where you need a password and valid user account to get in. Basically, Windows needs to know you. There's no pressing ESC to get in like Windows 9x. (I'm going to spend a couple seconds explaining this for a bit) Assuming that you have a Windows account, when you log in, a profile is created for you. In this profile, documents you create, cookies, bookmarks, preferences,...it's all here. In Windows 2000, you can't access someone else's profile unless you're an administrator. Now, if you save a file outside of the default directory, usually the Documents folder, then it's fair game on your files.

Windows file security works in a few ways. Standard FAT16 or FAT32 file systems provides share level security. This means that if someone tries to access your computer over the network, you can either allow the person to view your folder contents or not. However, you cannot specify permissions to the subfolders or files in the folder themselves. Also, if the person is sitting on your PC, no matter how they log in, they can view the contents of the folder without problems. Not so with NTFS. NTFS, as mentioned earlier, allows file level security, as well as local security. NTFS also has other benefits such as long file name support and larger partition sizes, up to 16 Exabytes in theory, but more like 2 Terrabytes in practice. NTFS is also less prone to disk fragmentation, though it still happens.

Choosing a NTFS file system does present some problems though. Generally, it has more overhead. It's not recommended for hard drives or partitions less than 500MB. A big problem is that NTFS partitions cannot be accessed in DOS mode without a 3rd party utility. This poses problems for those wanting to access files in the event of a Windows failure. Imagine saving your work on the c:, and Windows crashes bad enough that you need a reinstall. Well, you're in for some headaches if you want to get to those files in DOS mode.

Due to the fact that most home users tend to be more abusive to their computers than a corporate user (installing various software, beta drivers, etc...), I generally don't suggest NTFS for them. Still, some people have important data that needs to be secure, especially in the age of broadband Internet. I still recommend a router, hardware or software based, and a personal firewall, but if you're dillegent about backups, and want another way to add security for free (other than MS security patches), NTFS is the way to go.

This guide is geared towards Windows 2000 users, but the principles apply to Windows NT users as well. We're going to look at three different ways of setting up your drives to NTFS. I'm not going to bog you down with too much info, like auditing and ownership (Windows NT terminology). The scope of the guide is to get you started towards a more secure computer....

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