Before you start, please make RAW copy of your storage drive with tools such as
http://www.hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/.
Your OS might write configuration, temp. file or make "Recycle Bin" folder which could overwrite your bitcoin wallet file.
I might be wrong, but can't WinRAR open archives even if they're password protected? I believe you could see what files there are inside, but you couldn't extract/open then unless you had the password.
That depends on your encryption configuration. There's option to encrypt file list as well.