I'm starting to use EFS feature to encrypt several folders of my hard drive, using Right click > Properties > Advanced > Encrypt contents to secure data (see screenshot).
At the end of the process, a wizard suggests that I should save a copy of certificate on a safe place:
But I don't want to rely on a file certificate stored on 1, 2 or even 10 different places, that seems complex. And can lead to catastrophes requiring black magic to recover the files. I would prefer to remember a password (even if it's a long password).
Question: Let's say folder C:\Test
is EFS-encrypted on computer A. If I move its hard drive to computer B (example: computer A failure!), how to recover the folder C:\Test
, with just a password (and no other complex method like certificates, etc.)?
In other words: can we avoid complex certificates methods (involving certificate files), and use a good (strong) password instead for EFS encryption/decryption?