In the following tutorial, I explain how to hide a drive letter in Windows; hide a drive from being displayed in File Explorer. This is useful if you want to prevent average users from easily detecting or navigating a hard disk attached to your system. Note that the drive can still be accessed by typing its letter directly in Explorer.
How to Hide a Drive in Windows (XP, 7, 8, 10, 11)
Warning: We will be editing the system registry to hide the drive letter. Mistakes in the registry can cause serious problems. Proceed with caution and back up your registry first.
- Click Start -> Run, type regedit, and click OK (or search - regedit)
- Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
- From the menu, go to Edit -> New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value
- Name the new value NoDrives
- Right click NoDrives and select Modify. Check Decimal and enter the decimal value corresponding to the drive you want to hide. Use the values below:
- A = 1
- B = 2
- C = 4
- D = 8
- E = 16
- F = 32
- G = 64
- H = 128
- I = 256
- Click OK and restart your PC to verify the drive is no longer displayed.
Note: To make the drive visible again, simply delete the NoDrives key or set its value back to 0.
This method works in Windows XP, 7, 8, 10, and 11, but be careful with system drives like C: as hiding the primary system drive can cause confusion or access issues.