Does anyone know of any apps that you can use to lock down specific folders, so that it will require a password to view the contents (even from terminal) and/or make items contained in a folder impossible to be found via spotlight. So say I have sensitive documents on a computer that I want to let a friend use, if they search for something that would normally return hits of said files, it will just not return those hits.

thanks!

I dunno about locking certain files but to remove them from spotlight searches goto system prefs -> spotlight -> privacy and you can add whatever you don't want in there. However the easiest way to keep your parents from seeing the horse pr0n is make a seperate user account

on your HDD root drive, make a folder named something like .foldername (needs a . ) then go to go -> go to folder -> type in /HDDname/.foldername that will make it invisable

Or go to Disk Utilities and create an image with 128bit encryption password. =) You can make pre-made CD or DVD sizes or whatever size you want.
Then, use it as a disc. You can mount and unmount whenever you want.

Can you elaborate on this? So it creates a mountable image, and in order to mount it there will be a password prompt? Does it still do this if you are a root?