Finding Encrypted Files or Folders on Windows NTFS Partitions

Windows NTFS supports Windows Encrypting File System (EFS),which means some files or folders can be encrypted. In more than one occasion, I have lost access to files or folders while I copied them to external hard drives. Perhaps, one strategy is to list files or folders that are encrypted, and we can then decide what to do with them. This can be easily achieved on Windows Command Prompt via the following command,

cipher /S:D:\ /H | findstr "^E"

In the above example, we are looking for encrypted files on drive D:\. Command cipher lists all files and folders, and indicates whether the files or the folders are encrypted. The switch /H is to instruct cipher to look for hidden or system files as well. Command findstr allows us to use Regular Expression, and In "^E", "^" indicates the beginning of a line and "E" indicates that the file or the folder is encrypted.