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With Safehouse professional you can store your documents, photos and other confidential files in a secret virtual disk called “volume”. The volume size can be extended to any size you want, according the amount of hard disk space available in your PC. In the volume you can drag and drop files, and do other things as any other disk letters can do, or you can set the volume as “read only” in the installation. At first you will create a primary volume, but actually you can create as many volumes as you wish.

The volume can only be accessed by the password you set. There is a huge Password dictionary warns against easy-to-guess passwords. The length of password ranges from 1 to 255 bytes. Meanwhile, it supports storing passwords on ActivIdentity smartcards. No matter how long your password is, you only need to remember the PIN code in your smartcards or USB sticks. You can set a USB stick as a smartcard, and the detailed steps can be seen in our “Install” part. It doesn’t matter if you forget the password, because Safehouse professional allows the lost password to be reset.

Volumes can be located on internal and external hard drives, USB drives, memory sticks, CDs, DVDs and network servers. Besides, it can be securely backed up to other drives, tape or DVDs using standard backup software.

The program supports multiple administration groups or zones. It can be used in company or any organizations. While in use, there will be an administrator account, which has the authority to create customized installers and reset lost passwords. You can refer to our “Performance” part to see how to reset the password.

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The process for setting up the program is very easy. Just download the Safehouse, double-click the setup icon to begin the installation, and then follow the on-screen instructions.

But, remember, running setup doesn’t mean encrypting your data files. After running setup, the installation wizard will ask you to create a protected private storage area to hold your confidential files. Then, encryption begins.

Actually, configure the privacy protection is time-consuming which needs to enter more information. After installation, the configurations begin, so that you will be required to choose the volume size, the location of the volume, the description. Safehouse defaults to select the volume size at 25 megabyte. Of course, you can resize it from 16 megabytes to 255 megabytes according to your hard drive space. If you have already finished setup, just right click on the red padlock icon in the right bottom of your desktop, and then choose the “Tool & Options” menu item. The dialog is shown below. Pressing the “Tools” button, you will see 5 options for you to adjust the former setting, such as change volume password, view or change property, resize volume and so on. (see figure 1)

figure 1

SafeHouse adds even more security by allowing you to store your passwords to smartcards and USB memory sticks. No matter how many passwords you keep, you’ll never need to type them again. All you need to remember is the single PIN to your smartcard or memory stick. To turn a USB flash drive to smartcard for storing password, you can also go to the “Tool & Options” dialog and press the “options” button. In the dialog you need to choose “virtual smartcard using USB flash drive” from the drag-down menu. Then click the “options” next to the menu (see picture 2) and follow the instructions step by step.

figure 2

 

The process of uninstallation is smooth but not perfect. Safehouse professional can't be uninstalled completely. After uninstalling it, the program still leaves the shortcut icons on the desktop and the program file in the hard drive, so that users need to manually clear them.

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How can Safehouse professional help you?

Frankly speaking, the software enables the encryption feature as much as possible. The function is like that: in the installation, you will create a “volume” which is just like a safe, to keep all your data. The volume serves as a new ordinary windows file and can be applied with other applications. The volume can secure backup all your sensitive files. Firstly you will create the primary volume by the size you want, but actually there is not limit to the number and size of volume. You can create much more new volumes at any time as you like. Each volume has its own password. Most people like to create several volumes for different areas of work. For example, you can set one volume for pictures, one for business documents, and another one for private diary. When you put your files into one of these volumes, they are under strong protection of Safehouse. Once you move them out, they will be no longer protected by the software.

There are two ways to put files into the volume. One is right click the Safehouse padlock system tray icon, the other is to double-click the menu items which are used for open, close and work with your volumes in Windows Explorer. Windows will treat your volumes as new "virtual" hard drives which are only accessible once you enter your password. Because the program will not lock up the volume automatically, you need to click the “close volume” menu item to close it.

How to reset password?

The software is powerful with its strong encryption and password protection. But there are always something happened out of expectation. What if we lost the password? Does it mean our files will be locked in a disk which may never be opened? Can we get them back and reduce our loss? Luckily the answer might meet our needs because we use the professional edition which is available to reset lost password.

Reset password required administrator authority. If you have purchased a single copy of SafeHouse for your own personal use, then you are not an administrator. The professional one is designed for organization use, which the administrator can distribute the software to multiple employees. You can create an administrator account and set the administrator’s password first, and then perform more tasks which non-administrator can’t do. The steps for password reset are much simpler, which is shown in the picture below. Choose the “Tools and Options” by right clicking the padlock icon, and then start to reset the password step by step (see fugure 3) . There is one note to remind: if the Reset Password button is disabled, it means that your volume has not been configured by your system administrator to support resettable password.

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Overall Review:Though the file size is a little big, and the software don’t support complete uninstallation, Safehouse professional is undoubted a robust software that provides effective encryption. If you require strongest data encryption, or need to reset lost passwords, Safehouse professional seems to be one of the best choices. Compared with other encryption software, Safehouse professional is superior for its multiple functions. With the protection of Safehouse professional, you will never be afraid of your confidential files and documents being read, removed, or revised..

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