is the best way remove the drive letter to hide a partition ?

Emilispk said:

Are you trying to hide your partition from windows explorer? Or from partitioning software?

hi

i'm tring to hide a partition or an hard drive from windows 7 , i don't want w7 could see it

DavidW7ncus said:

Removing the drive letter will hide the partition for many things such as Windows Explorer.
Windows still can "see" the partition, and it will be displayed if you look at Disk Management.

What do you mean by "run mydefrag ,an amazing defrag"...
Is that some 3rd party defrag utility you use?

hi my defrag is a freeware _http://www.mydefrag.com/

thanks

Emilispk said:

And why are you trying to hide it?

i don't want it can mess up the other os

for example have w7 on an hard disk and w8 in another hard disk, it's just an example ,i guess it's better if they don't see each other

Yes, the best way to hide another multi-booted OS from the booted one is to remove its drive letter in Disk Mgmt. Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

This does not hide the drive from disk maintenance software, or affect the hidden OS's ability to boot if needed. It only hides it from the booted OS's Explorer which needs a drive letter to see any partition's files.

I recommend Puran Defrag Free Edition which offers a boot time defrag that gets at system files, which no defrag run from Windows can do. If you select Intelligent Optimizer on the Additional Operations tab it also moves most-used programs and files to the outer edge of HD for faster reads.

You can try:
1.Open Control Panel
2.Change "View By: Large Icons"
3.Administrative tools
4.Computer Management
5.Under "Storage" click on "Disk Management"
6.Select the partition you want to change/hide
7. Right click it. In the context menu click "Change Drive Letter and paths..."
-------------------------
Hope this helps somehow.
I dont really see the point of hiding the partition from other OS, maybe just for Virus protection?
And if you hide that partition, I think the MBR might not find the OS partition and not boot it.
-----------------------
And if you just want to hide it from the Windows explorer:
1. Open up regedit.exe by using the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following key.

Code:

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

2.The NoDrives key most likely does not exist by default, so you’ll need to create it with right-click \ new 32-bit DWORD and name it NoDrives.
3.Now Right click it, and select Modify
4.Select the Decimal(Radio button)
5.In the "Value data:" you need to write a number corresponding to the drive letter.
EXAMPLE:
Drive Letter Number
A 1
B 2
C 4
D 8
E 16
F 32
G 64
H 128
In order to see these changes, you’ll need to restart explorer.exe, which you can do easily from Task Manager or the longer way by just logging off and back on.
And so on :)
Hope this helps!

gregrocker said:

Yes, the best way to hide another multi-booted OS from the booted one is to remove its drive letter in Disk Mgmt. Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

This does not hide the drive from disk maintenance software, or affect the hidden OS's ability to boot if needed. It only hides it from the booted OS's Explorer which needs a drive letter to see any partition's files.

I recommend Puran Defrag Free Edition which offers a boot time defrag that gets at system files, which no defrag run from Windows can do. If you select Intelligent Optimizer on the Additional Operations tab it also moves most-used programs and files to the outer edge of HD for faster reads.

thanks for the advises!
does puran defrag speed up the ssd units?

DavidW7ncus said:

To fully and completely isolate each OS from another OS, you would need have each OS on a different HD(SSD), and disconnect the OS HD(s) not being booted.
To me that's not practical for everyday use with a multi-boot PC.

What I do is create System Backup Images and keep them offline.
That way if one OS (or anything) causes problems for another OS partition, I can restore from the offline backup.
Offline backups are also a nice insurance policy for recovering for Malware...

yes i got it

and disconnect the OS HD(s) not being booted.
To me that's not practical for everyday use with a multi-boot PC.

but this is really not pratical , maybe the bios should better
thanks

Emilispk said:

You can try:
1.Open Control Panel
2.Change "View By: Large Icons"
3.Administrative tools
4.Computer Management
5.Under "Storage" click on "Disk Management"
6.Select the partition you want to change/hide
7. Right click it. In the context menu click "Change Drive Letter and paths..."
-------------------------
Hope this helps somehow.
I dont really see the point of hiding the partition from other OS, maybe just for Virus protection?
And if you hide that partition, I think the MBR might not find the OS partition and not boot it.
-----------------------
And if you just want to hide it from the Windows explorer:
1. Open up regedit.exe by using the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following key.

Code:

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

2.The NoDrives key most likely does not exist by default, so you’ll need to create it with right-click \ new 32-bit DWORD and name it NoDrives.
3.Now Right click it, and select Modify
4.Select the Decimal(Radio button)
5.In the "Value data:" you need to write a number corresponding to the drive letter.
EXAMPLE:
Drive Letter Number
A 1
B 2
C 4
D 8
E 16
F 32
G 64
H 128
In order to see these changes, you’ll need to restart explorer.exe, which you can do easily from Task Manager or the longer way by just logging off and back on.
And so on :)
Hope this helps!

wow super thanks