The best bet is just to use a USB memory stick for anything you want to keep private.

If it's been taken away then it's pretty hard to access.

Encrypting stuff on work computers is probably secure mut may be outside the acceptable use policy and could land you in hot water

How about installing the free version of PGP for whatever O/S you run, generate yourself a Key Set, I'd recommend DH/DSS key set though it doesn't matter much to be fair. But you must set a password for your key.

The normal use for this software is to encrypt emails but you can also encrypt files. Just encrypt the file/s that you want. It can only be decrypted by your private key which can only be accessed with your password. So even if someone gets your key they can't get into your files. Export your key set and take it home so if you take your files home to work you can still open your files.

And remember if you loose the key you wont get back in to the files so keep your key set safe:)

You will also need to install this on your home PC.

Hope this helps,

Madjak

Freeware PGP versions

Apologies Dr Zoidberg - Just seen the comment "could land you in hot water":)

It doesn't sound like there is an acceptable use policy, or even any IT personnel (let alone domain admins), so I don't think James is going to be in any trouble whatever he does. I'd just convert my filesystem to NTFS, but not everybody understands how that works, so the USB drive is sounding favourite.

If you're not on a domain (I doubt it from what you've said), then an NTFS partition with user rights sounds like a good thing.

Although more geared towards network file sharing, the guide on practically networked is very useful and distinguishes LAN permissions (in the Sharing tab) and file permissions access (in the Security tab). Worth a read here

USB keys are great of course, but depending on the type of media you're accessing, can be notoriously slow. Of course, as Z said, when you're physically "away" and take the key with you, no one will be able to hack their way in