Wikipedia
The Encrypting File System (EFS) on Microsoft Windows is a feature introduced in version 30 of NTFS that provides filesystem-level encryption The technology enables files to be transparently encrypted to protect confidential data from attackers with physical access to the computer EFS is available in all versions of Windows except the home versions (see Supported operating systems below) from Windows 2000 onwards By default, no files are encrypted, but encryption can be enabled by users on a per-file, per-directory, or per-drive basis Some EFS settings can also be mandated via Group Policy in Windows domain environmentsCryptographic file system implementations for other operating systems are available, but the Microsoft EFS is not compatible with any of them
Encrypting_File_System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia