How to Restrict / Hide / Remove Drives in Windows Explorer?

If you are an old AskVG reader, you might be aware of our ultimate restrictions list article which can be read at following link:

List of All Kinds of Restrictions for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7

The above article helps you in restricting certain things in Windows. For example, you can restrict access to Taskbar settings, Folder options, System properties, Internet options, Desktop properties, Registry editor, Task Manager, Control Panel and so on.

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In point 25 of above mentioned article, we told you about restricting drives in Windows using a simple registry trick. It allows you to hide or restrict desired drives in Windows.

Today we are going to share another easy trick to restrict a desired partition / drive in Windows Explorer. This new trick doesn’t involve registry editing.

With the help of this trick, you’ll be able to restrict / hide any desired drive in Windows so that no one can access that particular drive and see your valuable data.

So without wasting time, lets share the trick:

1. Type diskmgmt.msc in RUN or start menu search box and press Enter. It’ll open Disk Management window. Alternatively, you can right-click on Computer icon, select Manage option. It’ll open Computer Management window. There you can access Disk Management present in Storage section.

2. Disk Management window will show a list of all partitions present in your hard disk. You just need to select the partition which you want to hide, right-click on it and select “Change Drive Letters and Paths” option. In our example, we are going to restrict D: drive.

Changing_Drive_Letter.png

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3. As soon as you click on the option, it’ll open a new dialog box which allows you to change or remove the drive letter. Click on Remove button.

Removing_Drive_Letter.png

4. Windows will show a warning message “Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Are you sure you want to remove this drive letter?“. Click on Yes button.

That’s it. It’ll immediately remove the selected drive from Windows Explorer.

Before removing drive:

Drive_Showing_Windows_Explorer.png

After removing drive:

Drive_Not_Showing_Windows_Explorer.png

Now all users will be unable to access that particular drive.

5. When you want to use that drive, again open Disk Management, right-click on that partition, again select same “Change Drive Letters and Paths” option and now click on Add button.

Now you can select the desired drive letter from the given list and click on OK button.

Adding_Drive_Letter.png

That’s it. It’ll start showing the drive again in Windows Explorer.

Feel free to share your feedback about this cool trick in your comment. Do you know any other trick to restrict drives in Windows?

Thanks to our reader “Alok9shm” for sharing this cool trick…

Also Check:

[Fix] Hard Disk Drives (Partitions) Not Visible in Computer

Published in: Troubleshooting Guides, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. Personally I prefer the registry method, that way you can still access the drive just by typing the path in.

  2. I have always used this method to hide my hd, downside is any administrator having knowledge of this can circumvent it…

  3. Thank you for the post.

    Is there any trick or s/w that restrict deleting, copying or moving any files in a drive but anyone can access by opening them?

    Like opening an mp3 file in winamp or any other player but no-one can delete, copy or move them?

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