In the following tutorial, I explain how to hide a drive or drive letter from being displayed in My Computer. This is useful if you don't want just any average user to be able to easily detect, access and navigate a hard disk that is attached to your system. Note that the drive can still be accessed from explorer by typing in the drive letter. Because we are going to be editing the system registry to hide the drive letter you should proceed with caution, as it is possible to do irreversible damage to your system if you make a mistake.
How to hide a drive in Windows XP:
- Click Start -> Run type regedit in the box and click OK
- Navigate to:
- From the menu, navigate to Edit -> New -> DWORD Value
- Name the New Value NoDrives
- Next, Right click NoDrives and select Modify, now check the Decimal option and under Value Data enter a decimal value for the drive you would like to hide. For example to hide C you would enter 4. See the list below for more values:
- A=1
- B=2
- C=4
- D=8
- E=16
- F=32
- G=64
- H=128
- I=256
- Click OK once finished and restart your PC to verify the drive letter is no longer displayed
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer
Note: You can delete the key that was created to display the drive again.