How to hide a disk partition in Windows without installing programs. How to hide a hard drive partition in Windows

I won’t go into details why you need to hide the disk partition in the operating room Windows system, but if you are reading this article, then you need it.
There are several ways to hide a disk in Windows. Here I will consider the simplest ones without the help of third-party programs.
So, you can hide the disk using local policies, registry editor and, accordingly, a special native standard utility Windows.
Let's start with the last one. Click on My (Your/Your/Our) computer with the right mouse button (RMB) and select in context menu Control.
In the Computer Management snap-in, go to Disk Management, select there required disk, right-click and select “Change drive letter or drive path...” from the context menu.

and in this window click on Delete

The next way to hide a drive in Windows is to use Group Policy.
The easiest way to get into it is to press the Win + R key combination and enter gpedit.msc into the window
Next go to the section

User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows components-> Explorer

Well, another way to hide a disk partition is with the help of everyone’s “favorite”. We launch it and go to the branch

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

With all these manipulations on how to hide or delete a disk in Windows, it is worth remembering that if you have games or programs installed on this very disk that you want to hide, then the system will not see them and something may go wrong. It is also worth remembering that when “returning visibility” it is very desirable to indicate the same letter that it had before.
You should also know that the radar will actually disappear only with the first method. In others, it simply will not appear in My Computer, i.e. in Explorer. And if you open some file manager like the notorious Total Commander, then the hidden disk will be visible through it.

IN operating system Windows 7 and 8 and what it is for. Nothing has changed for Windows 10. The same disk is displayed in the Disk Management utility and is intended to protect and store OS boot files. However, if it bothers you or you do not want to allow other users of your PC to manipulate this section, you should hide it. There are a lot of methods to hide a disk reserved by the system in Windows 10. Let's take a closer look at them.

Hide System Reserved using the command line

To hide the System Reserved drive in Windows 10, you should follow a few simple steps:

• Press “Win+R” and enter “cmd”.

• The console will open. Enter the first command “diskpart”. Then we write “list volume” to see all the sections that it has hard drive.

• Let's assume that Volume 1 is Reserved by the System (in our case, it is the system partition). Often its size is 450 MB.
• Now enter “select volume N”, where N is the partition number.

• After selecting the volume, enter “remove letter=E”, where E is the letter of the volume that you want to hide.
• To exit the utility, enter “exit”.

Now in Windows 10 this section will be invisible.

How to hide a partition in Windows 10 via Disk Management?

Often, in the Windows 10 operating system, you can see the System Reserved section only in the Disk Management utility. Using the same utility, you can hide and display it. To do this we do the following:

• Press “Win+R” and enter “msc”.

• A new window will appear. Right-click on Reserved by the system or disk that you want to remove from this list. Select “Change drive letter or drive path...”.

• In a new window, select the disk and click “Delete”.

• The disk will not be deleted, it will only disappear from Explorer.

Hiding the Reserved Section through the Local Group Policy Editor

The entire operational array required for Windows operation 10 is stored on disk Reserved by the system. If you want to hide it using the Local Group Policy Editor, your actions should be as follows:

• Press “Win+R” and enter “gpedit.msc”.

• Go to the branch “User Configuration”, “Administrative Templates”, “Windows Components”, “Explorer”. In the window on the right, select “Hide selected drives from My Computer window.”

• Double click to open the parameter and set the value to “Enabled”.

• Afterwards we restart the computer.

Editing the registry as a method for hiding a drive in Explorer

To hide a section using this method, do the following:

• Press “Win+R” and enter “regedit”.

• The Registry Editor will open. Go to the branch “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer”. Right-click on last section and select “New”, “32-bit DWORD Value”. Let's name this parameter "NoDrive".
• The value is set according to the table. In this table we select the value according to the letter of the reserved partition.

• After making changes to system registry it is worth rebooting the system.

To learn how to hide the System Reserved section, watch the video:

In some situations it is necessary to hide hard section disk or SSD drive, on a computer running Windows operating system. After that, hidden local disk(chapter hard drive or another hard drive, if there are several of them on the computer) will no longer appear in file manager Windows Explorer.

Why is it necessary to hide a disk partition (disk) on a computer? For greater security and to prevent access to the local disk, it makes sense to make the hidden disk partition “invisible” in Explorer.

For example, following reasons force the user to make the disk hidden:

• The disk stores important personal or confidential data
• to protect the disk from unauthorized use
• to protect system partitions, system recovery partition on the hard drive

The Explorer window “My Computer” (“This PC”, “Computer”) displays all drives connected to the computer, except for hidden partitions (hidden local disks). Each local disk corresponds to a specific letter of the alphabet; with the help of letters, disks are distinguished from each other. The user can change the drive letter by selecting a free alphabet letter. For greater clarity, you can assign a volume label to the local disk.

On a computer, hidden partitions on the hard drive are protected from outside interference and attention. Please note that it is possible to see Windows hidden disks through the Disk Management snap-in or using the command line.

System partitions are initially hidden for greater security from actions inexperienced users. Laptops often have additional section recovery - Recovery, which, in most cases, is hidden by default.

By using Recovery section the system is restored to original condition, at the time of purchasing the laptop. On some laptop models, the system restore partition appears in File Explorer, so you can hide it from view. Anyway, you won’t be able to use this section for other purposes.

How to hide a drive in Windows? To solve the problem, we will use several tools of the Windows operating system:

• Disk Management
• Command line
• Registry Editor
• Local Group Policy Editor

The methods described in the instructions work equally well in different versions Windows operating system: in Windows 10, in Windows 8.1, in Windows 8, in Windows 7.

How to hide a disk partition in Windows using Disk Management

The easiest way to hide hard drive partitions is to use the Disk Management snap-in in Windows.

To enter Disk Management, use one of two methods.

1. Press the “Win” + “R” keys on your keyboard at the same time.
2. In the “Run” window, in the “Open” field, enter the command “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes), and then click on the “OK” button.

1. Right-click on the “This PC” (“My Computer”) icon. Read about how to return “My Computer” to the Desktop.
2. In the context menu, select "Management".
3. In the “Computer Management” console window, on the left side of the window, follow the path: “Computer Management (local)” => “Storage Devices” => “Disk Management”.

The Disk Management window displays all of the computer's drives, including hidden partitions on a hard drive or multiple hard drives.

The Explorer window (see image above in the article) displays two hard drive partitions (Local drive “C”, Local drive “D”) and the drive DVD-RW drive. In the Disk Management snap-in window, you can see that there are four partitions on the hard drive, including two hidden ones system partition(“Disk 0 partition 1”, “Disk 0 partition 2”) created during Windows installations to the computer.

For example, you needed to hide the hard drive partition “Local Disk (D:)”. To do this, do the following:

1. In the Disk Management snap-in, right-click on the disk that you want to hide.
2. From the context menu, select “Change drive letter or drive path...”.

1. In the “Change drive letter or paths for X: (Local Disk)” window, click on the “Delete” button.

1. In the warning window, click on the “OK” button. If another warning appears, click on the “Yes” button.

Now you can look at the result of the performed operation in Explorer.

How to make a hidden drive open in Disk Management

To open a hidden drive in the My Computer location of File Explorer, follow these steps:

1. Go to Disk Management, select the disk you want to open.
2. After right-clicking on the drive, click on the context menu item “Change drive letter or drive path...”.
3. In the window to change the drive letter, click on the “Add” button.

1. In the "Add a drive letter or path" window, select the appropriate letter, and then click on the "OK" button. The operating system by default offers the first free letter of the English alphabet, in our case “D”.

After this, the hidden hard drive partition will be visible again in Windows Explorer.

How to hide a drive in Windows using the command line

Open command line on behalf of the administrator by any in a convenient way, for example this one. Next, in the command line interpreter window, run the following commands sequentially (after entering a separate command, press the “Enter” key):

Diskpart list volume

After this, all disks of this computer will be displayed in the command line window.

Enter the command to select the partition number (see the volume number in the command line, opposite the desired disk). In order to select the desired disk, be guided by the size of the local disk.

Select volume X (where X is the volume number)

Then enter the command to hide the selected volume. In the command, after the “equals” symbol, insert the letter of the section to be hidden (I selected the letter “D”).

Remove letter=D

Go to Explorer and make sure that the hidden hard drive partition is no longer there.

How to bring back a hidden hard drive partition in Explorer using the command line

To return everything back using the command line, enter the following commands in sequence (in the “select volume” command, insert the volume number of the hidden partition on your computer, and in the “assign letter” command, insert the letter that corresponds to the hidden disk partition on your computer):

Diskpart list volume select volume 2 assign letter=D

After executing the commands, close the command line interpreter window.

Now you can open Explorer to see the result of your actions: the hidden local drive is visible again.

How to hide a local drive in Registry Editor

A hard drive partition can be made hidden by changing the registry of the Windows operating system.

To launch Registry Editor, press “Win” + “R” on your keyboard and enter the command “regedit” (without quotes).

In the Registry Editor window, follow the path:

Right click on free space in the Registry Editor window, select “New” from the context menu, then “DWORD Value (32 bits)”. Give the parameter a name: “NoDrives” (without quotes).

Right-click on the “NoDrives” option, select “Edit...”. In the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value window, under Numeral System, switch to decimal, and then enter a numeric value that corresponds to the drive letter in this table:

For example, I want to hide the Local drive “D:”, in the table the letter “D” corresponds to the number “8”, so I must enter this figure in the "Value" field.

Click OK, close Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

To cancel the changes, delete from the registry the previously created “NoDrives” parameter located at the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Hiding a disk partition using the Local Group Policy Editor

In operating system versions Windows Pro and Windows Enterprise (Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7), and derivative editions of these versions, there is a Local Group Policy Editor with which you can hide a local drive on your computer.

Produce following settings in the Local Group Policy Editor:

1. Press the “Win” + “R” keys, in the “Run” window enter the command: “gpedit.msc” (without quotes).
2. In the “Local Group Policy Editor” window, follow the path: User Configuration => Administrative Templates => Windows Components => Explorer.
3. Right-click on the Hide selected drives from My Computer option and select Change.

1. In the window that opens, activate the “Enabled” setting, and in the “Options:” field, select one of the specified combinations. In this example, I selected the setting: “Restrict access to drive D”.
2. Click on the "OK" button.

To return the hidden drive to Explorer, in the Local Group Policy Editor, in the “Hide selected drives from the My Computer” window, enable the “Not configured” setting, and then click the “OK” button.

Conclusion

In the operating system Windows user can hide a hard drive partition (local drive) that will not appear in the Explorer My Computer window. You can hide a disk using system tools: Disk Management, Registry Editor, Local Group Policy Editor, or the command line.

In some situations, it is necessary to hide a partition of a hard drive or SSD drive on a computer running the Windows operating system. After this, the hidden local drive (hard drive partition or another hard drive, if there are several of them on the computer) will no longer appear in the Windows Explorer file manager.

Why is it necessary to hide a disk partition (disk) on a computer? For greater security and to prevent access to the local disk, it makes sense to make the hidden disk partition “invisible” in Explorer.

For example, the following reasons force the user to make the drive hidden:

• The disk stores important personal or confidential data;
• to protect the disk from unauthorized use;
• to protect system partitions and the system recovery partition on your hard drive.

The Explorer window “My Computer” (“This PC”, “Computer”) displays all drives connected to the computer, except for hidden partitions (hidden local drives). Each local disk corresponds to a specific letter of the alphabet; with the help of letters, disks are distinguished from each other. The user can select a free letter of the alphabet. For greater clarity, you can assign a volume label to the local disk.

On a computer, hidden partitions on the hard drive are protected from outside interference and attention. Keep in mind that it is possible to see hidden drives in Windows through Disk Management or using the Command Prompt.

System partitions are initially hidden for greater security from the actions of inexperienced users. Laptops often have an additional recovery partition - Recovery, which, in most cases, is hidden by default.

Using the Recovery partition, the system is restored to its original state at the time of purchase of the laptop. On some laptop models, the system restore partition appears in File Explorer, so you can hide it from view. Anyway, you won’t be able to use this section for other purposes.

How to hide a drive in Windows? To solve the problem, we will use several tools of the Windows operating system:

• Disk management.
• Command line.
• Registry editor.
• Local Group Policy Editor.

The methods described in the instructions work the same in different versions of the Windows operating system: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7.

How to hide a disk partition in Windows using Disk Management

The easiest way to hide hard drive partitions is to use the Disk Management snap-in in Windows.

To enter Disk Management, use one of two methods.

1. Press the “Win” + “R” keys on your keyboard at the same time.
2. In the “Run” window, in the “Open” field, enter the command “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes), and then click on the “OK” button.

1. Right-click on the “This PC” (“My Computer”) icon. Read about how to return “My Computer” to the Desktop.
2. In the context menu, select "Management".
3. In the “Computer Management” console window, on the left side of the window, follow the path: “Computer Management (local)” => “Storage Devices” => “Disk Management”.

The Disk Management window displays all of the computer's drives, including hidden partitions on a hard drive or multiple hard drives.

The Explorer window (see image above in the article) displays two hard drive partitions (Local Disk “C”, Local Disk “D”) and a DVD-RW drive. In the Disk Management snap-in window, you can see that there are four partitions on the hard drive, including two hidden system partitions (“Disk 0 partition 1”, “Disk 0 partition 2”) created during the installation of Windows on the computer.

For example, you needed to hide the hard drive partition “Local Disk (D:)”. To do this, do the following:

1. In the Disk Management snap-in, right-click on the disk that you want to hide.
2. From the context menu, select “Change drive letter or drive path...”.

1. In the “Change drive letter or paths for X: (Local Disk)” window, click on the “Delete” button.

1. In the warning window, click on the “OK” button. If another warning appears, click on the “Yes” button.

Now you can look at the result of the performed operation in Explorer.

How to make a hidden drive open in Disk Management

To open a hidden drive in the My Computer location of File Explorer, follow these steps:

1. Go to Disk Management, select the disk you want to open.
2. After right-clicking on the drive, click on the context menu item “Change drive letter or drive path...”.
3. In the window to change the drive letter, click on the “Add” button.

1. In the "Add a drive letter or path" window, select the appropriate letter, and then click on the "OK" button. The operating system by default offers the first free letter of the English alphabet, in our case “D”.

After this, the hidden hard drive partition will be visible again in Windows Explorer.

How to hide a drive in Windows using the command line

Open the command prompt as an administrator in any convenient way, for example. Next, in the command line interpreter window, run the following commands sequentially (after entering a separate command, press the “Enter” key):

Diskpart list volume

After this, all disks of this computer will be displayed in the command line window.

Enter the command to select the partition number (see the volume number in the command line, opposite the desired disk). In order to select the desired disk, be guided by the size of the local disk.

Select volume X (where X is the volume number)

Then enter the command to hide the selected volume. In the command, after the “equals” symbol, insert the letter of the section to be hidden (I selected the letter “D”).

Remove letter=D

Go to Explorer and make sure that the hidden hard drive partition is no longer there.

How to bring back a hidden hard drive partition in Explorer using the command line

To return everything back using the command line, enter the following commands in sequence (in the “select volume” command, insert the volume number of the hidden partition on your computer, and in the “assign letter” command, insert the letter that corresponds to the hidden disk partition on your computer):

Diskpart list volume select volume 2 assign letter=D

After executing the commands, close the command line interpreter window.

Now you can open Explorer to see the result of your actions: the hidden local drive is visible again.

How to hide a local drive in Registry Editor

A hard drive partition can be made hidden by changing the registry of the Windows operating system.

To launch Registry Editor, press “Win” + “R” on your keyboard and enter the command “regedit” (without quotes).

In the Registry Editor window, follow the path:

Right-click on an empty space in the Registry Editor window, select “New” in the context menu, then “DWORD Value (32 bits)”. Give the parameter a name: “NoDrives” (without quotes).

Right-click on the “NoDrives” option, select “Edit...”. In the Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value window, under Numeral System, switch to decimal, and then enter a numeric value that corresponds to the drive letter in this table:

For example, I want to hide the Local disk “D:”, in the table the letter “D” corresponds to the number “8”, so I must enter this number in the “Value” field.

Click OK, close Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

To cancel the changes, delete from the registry the previously created “NoDrives” parameter located at the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Hiding a disk partition using the Local Group Policy Editor

In versions of the Windows Pro and Windows Enterprise operating systems (Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7), and derivative editions of these versions, there is a Local Group Policy Editor with which you can hide a local drive on your computer.

Make the following settings in the Local Group Policy Editor:

1. Press the “Win” + “R” keys, in the “Run” window enter the command: “gpedit.msc” (without quotes).
2. In the “Local Group Policy Editor” window, follow the path: User Configuration => Administrative Templates => Windows Components => Explorer.
3. Right-click on the Hide selected drives from My Computer option and select Change.

1. In the window that opens, activate the “Enabled” setting, and in the “Options:” field, select one of the specified combinations. In this example, I selected the setting: “Restrict access to drive D”.
2. Click on the "OK" button.

To return the hidden drive to Explorer, in the Local Group Policy Editor, in the “Hide selected drives from the My Computer” window, enable the “Not configured” setting, and then click the “OK” button.

Conclusions of the article

In the Windows operating system, the user can hide a hard disk partition (local disk) that will not appear in the My Computer window in Explorer. You can hide a disk using system tools: Disk Management, Registry Editor, Local Group Policy Editor, or the command line.

If in the “My Computer” window we see several partitions, and one of them stores important data that should not be accessed strangers, we can hide it in the system.

The hidden drive will not be visible in Windows Explorer, but it can be accessed via the command line or by entering the drive letter in address bar conductor.

Hide a drive via Disk Management

If you want hide drive in Windows using the panel Disk Management, → right click My computer(or This computer– depends on the system version) and select Control.

In the console Computer management go to section Storage devices.

Now double click on Disk Management.

Will open disk management console and you will be able to view all the disks of your PC.

Select the drive you want to hide and right-click. Select and click on the Delete button.

If the system asks for confirmation, click OK. Now specified the disk will be hidden.

Hide a drive using Group Policy

First, call the start menu or sidebar search (or press Win + R) and enter the command: gpedit.msc

The Local Group Policy Editor window will open, in which we can configure many useful functions Windows - including what letters should be hidden in the system.

In the window Group Policy , you need to expand the branch User Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows components → Windows Explorer.

In the right Options window, find a function called Hide selected drives from My Computer window and double-click.

A window will appear in which we can configure which drive should be hidden in the My Computer window. We need to select the Enabled item and select the required combination of disks, for example: limit only drive D:

After applying the changes, the selected disk will not be visible in the “My Computer” window; to restore it, you must select the option in the same window Off. This way, all drives will be visible on the Windows system by default.

Hide a drive using the Windows Registry

Another way hide drive in Windows – change the list of registry keys.

Press the Win + R key combination → enter the command regedit and press Enter. The system will ask for confirmation, click Yes. The Registry Editor will open.

Follow the path below:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → Software → Microsoft → Windows → CurrentVersion → Explorer

Here you need to create new parameter DWORD, to do this, right-click in the Explorer window and select Create → DWORD value (32 bits).

Name it NoDrives and double click on it to change properties. Now a console will open where you need to enter the values. In the Value field, select the drive you want to hide. Each letter has unique value as below:

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: 16777 216, Z: 33554432, All: 67108863

Select the appropriate value for the drive and enter that number in the Value line. Also select Decimal system calculus for the basic section. For example, if you want to hide the G drive, then enter 64:

If you want hide two drives, for example, E and G, then you can enter the value one value → 80 (E = 16) + (G = 64).

Restart your computer and the drives will be hidden. If you want to return the disks, change the key value to zero, or you can delete the registry key NoDrives.

Hide Drive Using Command Line

1. Open a command prompt (Win + R → cmd → Enter), type the command diskpart and press Enter.
2. Type List Volume and press Enter.
3. Now select the type and number of the drive letter you want to hide (for example, drive G). For example it could be Select Volume 6. Press Enter.
4. Enter Remove Letter G and press Enter.

You will see a message - Diskpart successfully removed the drive letter or mount point.

To return hidden drive, follow steps 1-2-3 mentioned above.

Use the command Assign Letter G and press Enter. This will show the drive in Explorer.

You can also use free programs, like HideCalc, so that hide drive in Windows. Or read the comments below.