Hiding Specific Drives in My Computer
There are several reasons that a user will want to hide a drive from other users. It can be due to personal data or part of parental controls. Most users are unaware of access drives other than double-click on the icon in the File Explorer. There are several methods through which you can hide specific drives on your system. This will not restrict the access of the drives, but only hide the icon from the file explorer. Users can still access the hidden drives by using any other possible method for accessing drives.
Method 1: Hiding Drives through the Disk Management
Disk Management is a Windows utility through which you can view and manage disk drives. It is used to set up new drives and extend or shrink the existing drives. It also provides options for changing drive letters. By removing the drive letter, you can hide the drive from File Explorer. However, the drive can still be accessed through other methods. You can also use the mount point option and making the folder a hidden item.
Method 2: Hiding Drives through the Local Group Policy Editor
The Local Group Policy is a Windows feature that allows users to manage and configure the Windows operating system. This tool can be useful for both home users and network administrators. There are many settings in the Group Policy Editor that aren’t possible with Control Panel and Settings app. If you are using the Windows Home Edition, then skip this method because the Local Group Policy Editor isn’t available in the Windows Home Editions. Note: The Local Group Policy Editor setting will have limited options for drives to hide. Users cannot manually add the drive letter in this method to hide it.
Method 3: Hiding Drives through the Registry Editor
The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database in the Windows operating system that stores low-level settings. Unlike the Group Policy Editor, the Registry Editor will not have all settings available by default. The users are required to create the missing key/value manually by themselves. It is always recommended to create a backup of the registry before making any changes because a wrong change can cause issues for the operating system. Note: You can add the value in both the Current User (HKEY_CURRENT_USER) or All Users (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE). The path will be the same, but the hive will be different.
Method 4: Hiding Drives through the Command Prompt
The command prompt is the default command-line interpreter for the Windows operating system. It can be used to perform advanced administrative functions in the system. This method is similar to the disk management method and it also removes the drive letter. This method will require a few of the commands from the user to hide the drive from the file explorer.
Method 5: Hiding Drives through the EaseUS Partition Master
Partition Manager is used by an administrator to create, delete, or resize partitions on your system. There are many third-party partition managers available on the internet. Every partition manager will have different features and reliability. In this method, we will be using the EaseUS Partition Master to demonstrate, but you can download any one of the partition managers you prefer.
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