Introduction
This is a quick guide on how to zip and password protect discovery using 7-Zip. Windows supports creating zip files from folders and files but it does not include a password-protected version. For this reason, we recommend using 7-zip, a free archiving program.
To start, download the 7-Zip program from 7-zip.org/download.html. There are 2 versions: 32-bit or 64-bit. Download the version that is compatible with your version of Windows.
Once the program is installed, find it by searching with the Windows Start button as shown on Figure 2 below. Once you locate the 7-Zip File Manager program, click on open.
When the program launches, you will see the main 7-Zip screen:
If you click on the down arrow button on the right, you will see all your connected drives. On the screenshot above, you will see that I have several drives connected aside from my main local drive C:
Figure 5 shows that I have selected my external USB drive shown as drive E:\ where I have my cases and discovery folders.
Let’s say under E:\Cases I have two folders that I want to zip and password protect before I upload them to the cloud, or email or copy them onto an external hard drive. After you select the directory you want, you can select multiple folders, files, or a combination of the two by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking the mouse. Once you have the items you want, click on the little Green Plus Sign (Add) button on the toolbar as shown below:
Clicking on the “Add” button will launch the “Add to Archive” window.
Notice the name of the file is set automatically to name the folder where the files and folders are coming from. You may change the name if you’d like. The first time you use 7-Zip it will try and default to the .7z file extension. Click under the Archive Format and select zip as the Archive format. To the right of the file name will notice three dots. This will bring up the option for where you want to save the zip file. I suggest using the desktop as the location and then move it to an external USB drive later. Under the Encryption area you will see “Enter password:” field. If you have the “Show Password” option checked, it will display the password for you. If you don’t have it checked, you will have to enter it twice and you will only see asterisks (*) as your password. This is shown on Figure 8.
For the “Encryption method” the default is “ZipCrypto”. For a more secure option, select the AES-256 method. Once you are done, click on OK. Your zip file will be created at the location you specified. The file will look like this:
How to open a zipped file using 7-zip
Once you have downloaded and located the zip file on your computer. Right click on the zip file and click on “Show more options”.
When the more options menu pops up, navigate to the 7-Zip option, click on the right arrow and select “Extract files.”
After selecting Extract files option, you will get the following window.
As before, you can click on the three dots to select the path. Once you select the path, it will display it under the “Extract to:” field. In this case, I chose the Desktop as my path. You have the option to show or not show the password as you type it. In this scenario, I chose to show the password as shown on Figure 13.
This will unzip your Cases.zip file and will create a Cases folder on your desktop.
If for some reason you clicked on OK before entering the password in the step above, 7-zip will ask you again and the screen will look like this.
For more information, please visit 7-zip website at 7-zip.org.