Hiding Hard Drive on your PC7

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This trick can be used for mere entertainment, when you prepare nice computer prank on your friends or colleagues, but it also might be quite useful from practical security purposes, especially, when you share your computer with other people.


The question we address is “How to Hide Hard Drive on your Computer?”


We will provide several options on how to do so to satisfy need of all readers of this blog:


1. With HDHide freeware


Hide Drives Hide (HDHide) can be use to hide or unhide drive letters A: - Z: on any computer using Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP operating systems - whether they are actual physical drives on a local machine or logical drives (partitions, server volumes, mapped drives, etc.). Any of these drives can be hidden or unhidden.


The hidden drive letters will not be visible in Explorer or any other application that use the common Windows ’Save’, ’Save As’, or ’Open’ dialog boxes.


The software is small, easy to use, and completely portable (does not need to be installed on your PC), so if you want a simple and straightforward solution, this method will fit your needs perfectly.


Direct downloading Link. http://www.ziddu.com/download/2741816/hdhide.zip.html


Screen:

2. With TweakUI freeware


TweakUI is a part of the Microsoft PowerToys utilities, and can do much more than just hiding hard drives. It gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.


After installing, go to Start > Programs > PowerToys for Windows XP > TweakUI. Expand ’My Computer’, click on ’Drives’, then uncheck the drives you wish to hide.

Direct downloading link. http://www.ziddu.com/download/2741877/TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe.html
3. With built-in Diskpart utility


This way does not require from you installing or using any additional software to do the job, since you can achieve the same result easily using nothing more than the Command Prompt.


Here’s how:


- Click Start -> Run (This brings up the Run dialog box)
- Type cmd and press Enter (This brings up the Windows Command Prompt)
- Type diskpart in the command prompt and press Enter (This launches the Diskpart utility within the Command Prompt window)
- Now type list volume (This displays a list of all mounted volumes on your computer and their associated drive letters):

- Using the above picture as reference, if, for example, you would like to hide drive E, type select volume 6
- Now type remove letter E (Note: This action requires a computer reboot).


Diskpart will now remove the drive letter. The drive will no longer be available via Windows Explorer or My Computer.


Now, should you want to unhide the drive and make it accessible again, just repeat the above process. But instead of typing remove letter E, type assign letter E

4. By registry modification.


- Open Registry Go to Run command, type "regedit" (without quotes) and press enter.


- Registry page will open, now go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER’Software’Microsoft’Windows’CurrentVersion’Policies’Explorer


- Now right click in right side pane and create DWORD Value. Call the new registry value as "NoDrives". Double click on "NoDrives" to enter a Decimal value. This value depends on the drives you wish to hide, and is created by adding the numbers for each drive you wish to hide from the list below. Click OK once you have entered this number.


For example, to hide drive D you would enter a decimal value of 8. To hide both drives D and E, you would enter a decimal value of 24 (8+16).


Values for each drive per its letter:


A = 1
B = 2
C = 4
D = 8
E = 16
F = 32
G = 64
H = 128
I = 256
J = 512
K = 1024
L = 2048
M = 4096
N = 8192
O = 16384
P = 32768
Q = 65536
R = 131072
S = 262144
T = 524288
U = 1048576
V = 2097152
W = 4194304
X = 8388608
Y =16777216
Z = 33554432
All drives = 67108863


Once you restart your computer, the selected drives should be hidden. If you wish to remove the hidden drives, browse to the NoDrives registry value and delete it.

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7 comments to the post

  • interesting, but I prefer not to have sensitive data in my PC. I try to deete it and save what I need in a CD
  • Any deleted data can be recovered, unless you use the special shredding technique or software. So, do not be so sure. I am far of being paranoid. I do think, anything can be found, but I do not have any personal information of any particular value for hackers.
  • you're right. I've heard that the only thing to destroy information is break the hard drive. There's nothing that can destroy information. I only mean the interest that hackers can have in a drive that appears at first look that don't have data, and of course, belongs to a very normal user.
  • There are techniques that can destroy data completely. For example, you you format the drive, and right something on top, recovering the original content is almost impossible.
  • someone told me that even format don't destroy everything but I don't know anything about it. He said that is how some pedophiles are discovered.
  • Just formating will not destroy the possibility of the data recovery. But if you right something else on top, that will be most likely impossible to retrieve it.
  • I didn't know it

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