How to Hide Drives and Partitions in your computer

 Well, you can hide any drive in WindowsXP.i.e... that they won't show up in Explorer or MyComputer.

If you wantaccess to that drive from your user account you should create a desktopshortcut before proceeding. Once hidden, you can still access by typing thedrive letter and a colon in Start/Run—for example, "D:" will bring upa folder of the contents on your D drive.

The easiest waywith Win XP is to use the TweakUI power toy from Mcft. Go to Start/Run and typein "tweakui" (without the quotes).

Go to MyComputer/Drives and uncheck the drive/partition(s) you want hidden. Click"Apply" or "OK" when finished.

If you have XPbut not Tweak UI you can download it here

For Win NT, 2000,and XP you can use the following Registry edit:

*Be sure to back upthe Registry before proceeding

Open the RegistryEditor by going to Start/Run and typing in "regedit" (without thequotes). Find your way to...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mcft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

Click on"Explorer".

Double-click the"NoDrives" key in the right column. If you don't find a"NoDrives" registry key, just right-click in the right pane andchoose "New/DWORD Value" then name the key "NoDrives".

You'll see avalue like "0000 00 00 00 00". This is where the fun starts. The foursets of double zeros (after the "0000") are where you'll enter thevalues for the drive/partitions. Now, stay with me on this—it's not ascomplicated as it sounds:

The first columnis for drives A-H, the second for I-P, the third for Q-X, and the fourth forY-Z.

The values foreach drive are as follows:

1 - A I Q Y

2 - B J R Z

4 - C K S

8 - D L T

16 - E M U

32 - F N V

64 - G O W

80 - H P X

So, let's say youwant to hide drive D. In the first column you would put "08". Fordrive K you would put "04" in the second column.

But what if youwant to hide more than one drive in a column? Simply add the values together:D+E = 8+16 = 24. So in the first column you would put "24".

Still baffled? Ifyou have XP then go get TweakUI and save yourself the math.

Whichever methodyou use, you can rest easy knowing that the files on that drive or partitionare less accessible to other users.