Searching encrypted archives

[Armando]

Today I realized that a pretty useful file disappeared from my hard drive and so I was forced to search my incremental backups from the last 2 years. (Yes! Finally, I get to use them!  )

And then I realized that many indexer don't even index the file names in encryted archives, even if the file name itself is not encrypted. ie : Archivarius wouldn't index the unencrypted filenames of encrypted archives. I didn't examine too many options before finally trying winRAR's "find" feature. Beautiful. Worked like charm and found my file in a sept. 2006 archive. Took maybe 15s.

Which other solution do/would you use/recommend for such a task?

[4wd]

And then I realized that many indexer don't even index the file names in encryted archives, even if the file name itself is not encrypted. ie : Archivarius wouldn't index the unencrypted filenames of encrypted archives. I didn't examine too many options before finally trying winRAR's "find" feature. Beautiful. Worked like charm and found my file in a sept. 2006 archive. Took maybe 15s.

Which other solution do/would you use/recommend for such a task?

DiscLib can list filenames inside encrypted archives, (at least it seems to for ZIP and RAR), best of all - it's free.

I use it for cataloging backup CD/DVDs, have a look at it here: http://www.lyrasoftware.com//content/view/3/8/

[Renegade]

Which other solution do/would you use/recommend for such a task?

I like simple and easy stuff, so I'd probably just make a small NTFS partition to store sensitive things and have it encrypted at the drive level, then remember what's there. I'd avoid using software if possible. Low tech, but likely more efficient. How many "secret" files do you have anyways? Probably not that many... Then again, I don't store anything that's really important on disk. It's on paper and physically secure. Dunno. That's my take on it anyways.

[Armando]

DiscLib can list filenames inside encrypted archives, (at least it seems to for ZIP and RAR), best of all - it's free.

I'll check that out.

I like simple and easy stuff, so I'd probably just make a small NTFS partition to store sensitive things and have it encrypted at the drive level, then remember what's there. I'd avoid using software if possible. Low tech, but likely more efficient. How many "secret" files do you have anyways? Probably not that many... Then again, I don't store anything that's really important on disk. It's on paper and physically secure. Dunno. That's my take on it anyways.

Thanks.

The idea of having encrypted archives for my incremental backups is pretty simple IMO : each archive has a date and a time. And they're encrypted because, well... since they're automated backups I never really know what they contain, and I don't want potentially sensitive/personal info readily available to anybody.

As I said, the problem is/was in finding a specific file inside all these archives with searching tools -- they got baffled by the fact that the archives were encrypted (when the actual file names were NOT and available for reading).