Hide Drives in Windows Explorer

Did you know that it is possible to hide drives in Windows Explorer ? This can be useful for instance if you use a dual boot system and want to hide the partition of the system that you did not boot into. This is however not a way to prevent access to those drives, merely a cosmetic change and probably a way to prevent changes to the other partition from other users of the system. Experienced users can still access the drive without difficulties.

Drives can be hidden using the Registry. To open the Windows Registry press Windows R, type regedit and hit enter. Now navigate to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Policies \Explorer if you want to hide drives for the current user or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \policies \Explorer if you want to hide them for all users and create a new Dword (right-click free space on the right pane, select New > Dword) and name it NoDrives.

Setting the value of NoDrives is a little bit more complicated. Every drive has a specific value that has to be combined if you want to hide more than one drive. Here is a short table explaining the values for each drive:

• Drive A: – Value 1
• Drive B: – Value 2
• Drive C: – Value 4
• Drive D: – Value 8
• Drive E: – Value 16
• Drive F: – Value 32
• Drive G: – Value 64
• Drive H: – Value 128
• Drive I: – Value 256
• Drive J: – Value 512
• and so on

If you want to hide one drive just enter the value from that drive. If you want to hide more than one drive you have to add all values. If you wanted to hide Drive A, B and G you would enter the value 1+2+64 = 67.

You can revert those changes by setting the value to 0 or by deleting that Registry key completely. It is possible to access those drives in Windows Explorer by using the address bar. Simply use the drive letter of the hidden drive in the address bar to access it.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday December 16, 2007 -
Tags:windows tips