These days there are so many threats to the integrity of your files in a typical Windows PC. Ransomware for example targets your personal files and documents and encrypts them. If you want to keep your files safe without having to regularly make a backup of your files on a removable media or on your cloud storage then you may want to use a free software called NoVirusThanks File System Protector. It locks your selected files or folders and prevents any changes being made to them. This is done by altering the file access rights for the selected files or folders.
The first thing you have to do after installation is switch to the Rules tab and click on the Edit Rules button. This will open a notepad window with the Rules.DB file ready for you to edit. In this file, you have to add files or folders that you want to protect. The file contains examples of various kinds that you can use for adding your own rules. For example, if you want to prevent Notepad from accessing TXT files located inside C:\Windows, then you can add this line :
[%OPER%: DENY_ALL] [%PROC%: C:\Windows\notepad.exe] [%FILE%: C:\Windows\*.txt]
Or if you want to prevent access to the D:\WP folder then you can add this line:
[%OPER%: DENY_ALL] [%PROC%: *] [%FILE%: D:\WP]
Basically, you have to specify the operation, processes and files to be protected in a rule. As soon as you save this file, File System Protector will start working on the newly added rules. When I tried to access the D:\WP folder in File Explorer, I was shown an “Access Denied” message. The folder was set to read-only and its access permissions were also changed.
In the main File System Protector window, you will see a log of all the attempts made to access your protected files or folders. Using this tool, you can prevent any process or user from making changes to your system. It works great, but you have to add rules by hand and that makes it a little awkward.
You can download File System Protector from https://www.novirusthanks.org/products/file-system-protector/.