How I can hide the folder structure from a password protected RAR file?

Question

I want to save my files in a DVD or in several... I want to do it with this feature:

I want to protect and hide my files through a password. Normaly I used to compress my files and put it a password using Winrar. I usually put all in one .rar file.

But I don´t like that when you click on the .rar file, the program open it and you can see the folders and the name of the files even you can´t open them because they are locked by the password.

So I would like to hide totally all folders and files from whoever person don´t know the password.

Solution 1

Actually, WinRAR provides this option. You just need to enable it as in the following screenshot (I got here by right clicking a folder and clicking "Add to RAR..."):

You can get there by going to Advanced -> Set Password, entering your password, and clicking on "Encrypt file names". This will disallow you to even open the archive without the proper password.

Solution 2

You should use TrueCrypt (now called VeraCrypt), then compress it without a password (because TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt already encoded it).

Comments

[Rocket04]

Yes but now you need to use two programs for the archive instead of only one...

[Leonard Phelan]

But it is safer, I am not sure about what algorithm rar uses, but I am pretty sure truecrypt is better or equivalent.

[user1686]

RAR uses AES-128.

[Leonard Phelan]

Yep, anyway, TrueCrypt is an alternative

[Breakthrough]

Actually, this isn't "safer". The safest method would to include a recovery record in the RAR file. The Truecrypt volume is still susceptible to sector corruption, but at least if you have an RR in the RAR archive, you may have a chance at recovery.

[Michał Leon]

TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt beats rar fpr the purposes of hot data backup, i.e. data that you may want to access and / or change. This is because VeraCrypt creates an encrypted partition (that you later backup whole) and this partition is what you mount and access files.