If your computer has an NTFS partition, then there is a neat little trick to hide any file inside any other file. Unfortunately, this trick does not work on FAT32 formatted drive.

As an example let’s see how you can hide the solitaire file (sol.exe) inside a text file.

Let’s start by assuming that you are currently working on the C: drive. Create a folder and name it ‘Hide’ (of course, you could name it anything you want). Now create a text file inside the folder and enter a few lines of text. Let’s call it ‘container.txt’. As the name indicates, this text file will act as the container file. For this example, we will hide the Solitaire game file inside the text file. You will find the Solitaire file at C:\Windows\System32\sol.exe. Copy this file into the ‘Hide’ folder.

Now, open a command prompt, navigate to C:\Hide and type the following:

type sol.exe > container.txt:sol.exe

and press Enter. Nothing will appear to happen. There will be no message in the command window - just a new prompt and the contents of the folder will look the same, a text file of the original size and the 56KB of sol.exe. Try opening the container.txt file and you will only see the text that the file originally contained.

Now, delete the sol.exe file that you placed inside the Hide folder. In the command prompt, type the following:

start c:\hide\container.txt:sol.exe

and press the Enter key. Lo and behold, a game of solitaire will commence.

You can hide any file type in any other file this way. Just make sure the drive is NTFS formatted.

As you might have noticed, the size of the container file does not reveal the size of the hidden file. You could effectively hide a 10MB file inside a 10KB file without giving it away.

Just make sure that you remember the name of the hidden file because without the name you can’t possibly retrieve the file. It may remain hidden forever.

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