Hide the system disk in windows 10. How to hide a disk partition in Windows. Hide a drive using Group Policy

There can be many reasons for hiding a specific partition on your hard drive in Windows. One of the most commonplace is to prevent other users from viewing or editing files on a particular partition or digging into the system drive. In addition, users often wonder about how to hide or Recovery, which may suddenly appear in Explorer after any version. They cannot be used to store files, and editing their content can have bad consequences. Such discs should be hidden out of sight. Windows offers several scenarios for such a procedure, and in this instruction we will tell you how to do it.

Note: Account must have administrator rights to perform all procedures.

How to hide a drive in Windows using Disk Management

How can I get everything back?

Click Win + R and enter diskmgmt.msc.
Select the section that you have hidden, right-click on it and select Change drive letter or drive path.
If you simply deleted a letter to hide the drive, click Add and select the letter you need. Save the changes and the disk will appear in Explorer again.
If you made a secret link, then you must first remove it. Select the created path and click Delete.
Then click Add, select the desired letter and save.

Everything returned to its place.

How to hide a hard drive partition using Group Policy Editor

This is a more serious method that allows you to restrict access to the system disk. It is useful if particularly curious people have access to your computer and may accidentally or intentionally damage something in the device.

To return everything back, follow all the same steps, just specify the parameter Disabled in the editor window group policy hide selected drives.

Note: Using the Group Policy Editor, you can hide only some drives, like A, B, C and D. This limited set motivated by the fact that this function was developed for corporate needs, which have their own rules. If you need to hide another drive, use the first method. And don't forget that the user can still access the disk using a specific file address.

Why, in principle, might you need to hide sections? hard drive? Most often, this need appears after Explorer, in addition to the usual C and D drives, displays several more partitions that, in theory, should be hidden.

Typically, such partitions include disks where files are stored to restore the computer to its factory state or system partition responsible for loading the OS, which is created when installing Windows.

So, these sections are usually hidden not only because they will interfere with users, but also because, in fact, they are not intended for everyday use, and accidental or intentional changes to them can lead to problems in the operation of the operating system. Also, sometimes sections are hidden in order to hide some important data so that guests of your computer do not accidentally discover them.

So, here are instructions on how to remove or hide hard drive partitions from the “My Computer” window.

Hiding a regular partition in disk settings

Hiding partitions using the disk management utility is one of the easiest and fastest methods.

To get to this utility, you should go to “Management” and open the “Disk Management” section.

In the properties that appear, click the “Delete” button.

After this, the drive will no longer be accessible in Explorer. But, minus this method is that regular disks you will be able to hide without special problems, but with system ones it’s like that It does not always work.

How to hide system drives in the command line

Ok, let's look at another option that will help us hide not only regular, but also system partitions of the hard drive.

To begin with, we first open a command prompt window with administrator rights.

Now we execute the commands in order, which I will give below, while confirming the execution of each line with the “Enter” key.

Diskpart – launches the utility for editing hard disk properties;
list volume – shows a list of available partitions on the computer;
select volume (specify the partition number) – for example, for me it will be volume 2;
remove letter=D – the command hides the section. By the way, in order to return everything back, you will need to write instead of this command assign letter=e ;
exit

After finishing working with the command line, the hidden disk should disappear and no longer appear.

How to hide drives in the registry

As usual, in this article, we will not do without a registry. Editing registry settings and values is also one of the ways to hide unnecessary hard drive partitions. Moreover, I want to say that this method works on all versions of Windows OS, and will help hide not only regular partitions, but also system ones.

Using Win+R and regedit commands, .

Using the navigation buttons we get to the section:

We create new parameter DWORD and give it a name .

In the parameter we created, we indicate the digital value of the letter of the drive to be hidden.

In general, the trick is that if you specify a drive letter as a value, you won’t succeed. It’s just that each letter has its own digital value, which should be entered in the appropriate field.

For example, I want to hide the “D” drive. To do this, I open the “NoDrives” option and note that we will use decimal system notation and indicate the number “8” in the value field. If you need to hide several drives, then add up their values and enter the resulting result in the “NoDrives” parameter

After this, the disk should disappear from the explorer. If nothing happens, then to apply the settings you should simply restart the computer.

Hidden hard drive partition using group policies

Group Policy Editor is another place where we can hide our disks or partitions.

In order to get there, launch the “Run” window, let me remind you, this is done using the “Win + R” keys, and copy or enter the command there .

In the “User Configurations” section, go to the following folders “Administrative Templates”, then to “ Windows components" and finally "Windows Explorer".

Double click to open the parameter:

Having confirmed the new parameters by clicking on the “OK” button, the disks or partitions you selected should disappear until you decide to return them back.

During installation, a special hidden partition is created. You may notice this when selecting a drive partition, and especially when creating it. This information is also displayed in the Disk Management utility. In a nutshell, this is special Windows place, which is reserved by the system for recovery. How to view its contents on your laptop or computer? Is it possible to make it open? How to create a hidden hard drive partition yourself? About all this in our review.

What is the hidden section for?

You can hide yours secret files in a hidden section and no one will find them

If you only use your computer to play games or watch movies and read sites on the Internet, you may not need this theme. If you use it more deeply and often delve into the intricacies of its setup and operation, sooner or later you will end up in the disk management utility, where you will find a hidden partition of the hard drive, the space in which is reserved for recovery. What's most interesting is that the place is occupied, and in Explorer Windows drive not displayed.

The main purpose is storage necessary files for computer backup recovery. But in no case should they be confused with the recovery image, because its size will be much larger than the allocated 100 to 500 megabytes, depending on Windows versions. The newer the operating system, the more space is engaged. In addition, manufacturers themselves, especially laptops, can provide their devices with a small hidden partition so that they can be painlessly reset to factory settings with the possibility of recovery. Thus, each laptop will display two hidden volumes: system backup and recovery. Most often, their volume will be almost identical.

What does this opportunity give to the average user?

First, the data hidden volume are kept separate from public files so they cannot be affected various operations with files and storage devices, such as formatting or compression. In this regard, you can avoid some mistakes associated with Windows operation, and with certain knowledge and skills, you can much more easily restore the operating system instead of reinstalling it.
Secondly, the presence of such hidden recovery partitions will make it much easier to solve the problem of running several operating systems at the same time.
Thirdly, the most vital processes will be reliably protected from actions inexperienced users. For example, in Windows 7, the boot loader was stored on the system disk and therefore could be removed quite easily, which led to the loss of computer functionality. Now, to do this, you need to try hard, because these files are stored in a section marked “Reserved by the system.”
And finally, if you are concerned about the safety of some files and documents, you can hide certain volumes in the settings; this way, an attacker or simply an overly curious friend will not be able to gain access or accidentally delete important data.

How to find a hidden system partition

You can find an existing hidden drive partition quite easily. To do this, you need to launch the built-in disk management utility, with which you can view all necessary information and perform the necessary operations. How to get into it?

On Windows 10 or 8, right-click on the Start button and select “Disk Management.”
On older versions, click Start - Computer - right-click - Manage - Disk Management.
On all versions, press Win + R and then copy from here and paste diskmgmt.msc into the search bar.

After the utility starts, you will see at least 4 lines: drives C and D, recovery partition and system reserved. Each of them can have the following attributes:

System - the partition that contains the files required for downloading and normal operation systems;
Active - BIOS defines it as bootable;
Main partition - allows you to select it to place system files and boot.

If everything is clear with the first two, then “Recovery partition” and “Reserved by the system” are worth understanding in more detail. In the first case, it will be displayed only in the disk management utility, and it is impossible to make it visible using standard tools. You can open the second of them by simply assigning a letter to it, after which it will appear in Explorer.

How to create a hidden section

When automatically created during system installation

When installing Windows from scratch, you can create a hidden recovery partition. In new OS versions it will be created automatically. To do this, a number of conditions must be met:

Installation with external media(disk, flash drive).
No more than three volumes created; otherwise, the files will be copied to the already existing active partition.
The top section where installation is carried out.
Partitioning the drive from scratch, rather than installing it into an existing partition.

Having reached the stage of choosing an installation location, format the built-in drive, after which you need to delete all existing partitions, and then create at least two new ones, which will eventually appear as drive C or D. If you want to hide very important information from prying eyes, we advise you to create three volumes, one of which will not have very big size, for example, 25–30 gigabytes. In almost all cases, you will notice that the very first thing on the list will be “Reserved by the system” with a volume of 100 to 500 megabytes. What’s most interesting is that you can delete this partition when reinstalling, but it will be created again. If you delete only drive C or D, and leave the hidden partition in place, then the data will be overwritten into the existing “System Reserved” volume. If you want to save the data on drive D and not delete existing volumes, the information will also be overwritten to the hidden partition.

By going to the Disk Management utility, you will be able to see both the main volumes and the hidden ones. To hide a section you want:

Right-click on the one you want and select “Change drive letter or drive path.”
In the window that opens, hover over the letter and select “Delete.”

Now this drive will not be displayed in Explorer, since it is hidden.

If a hidden partition was not created during installation

For example, you used a computer and realized over time that you need to create new section hard drive. But make it standard using Windows impossible. Therefore, we recommend that you use great program Acronis Disk Director. With its help, you can perform almost any operation with your hard drive: resize, split, copy, clone, merge volumes, make them hidden and much more. The program costs money, a lot of it, but it's worth it. In addition, remorse will rarely arise in our minds if we use pirated copy. So, having found and installed the program Acronis Disk Director, follow these steps:

The first step is to open the main program window, where you will see a list of all your volumes, including the recovery partition and “Reserved by the system.”
Select the volume whose size you want to resize by clicking on it once.
In the left column you will see a list of operations that can be performed on the selected volume.
Select “Split volume”, after which the window for allocating space on the hard drive will open.
Enter the size of each volume manually or automatically by moving the adjustment slider.
Wait for the operation to complete and click the “Apply Pending Operations” button.
If necessary, restart your computer.
Next, you should re-open the program and select the volume you need.
Select “Make hidden”, after which it will not appear in Explorer.

This way you can change the sections you need and make them hidden when you need it.

Conclusion

As you can see, creating a hidden disk partition is not at all difficult; you just need to perform a few simple operations. However, if you still have questions about the intricacies of the procedure or what the “Reserved by the system” section is for, ask them in the comments.

Task: remove some disks from Explorer in order to ordinary users did not see them in the My Computer window, preferably through group policies.

Here I will post instructions on how to remove disks from explorer through the registry and through GPO.

Method number 1. Hiding local drives on your computer through the registry

Open the registry and go to the branch HREY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer, you need to create a REG_DWORD parameter with the name NoDrives. Set the following values to hide drives (values in hexadecimal):

A:+B: = 3
C:=4
D: = 8
E: = 10
F:=20
A+B+C=7
A+B+D=b
A+B+E=13
A+B+F=23
C+D=c
D+E=18, etc.

Hide all icons = 0x03ffffff

Hiding drive icons in My Computer and Explorer

If you want to hide drive icons in the My Computer and Explorer window, then open the section
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explоrer
and create a parameter NoDrives DWORD type with the required value. These icons will also be hidden in standard windows Opening and Saving Files. However, the user still has access to these drives (via the Run command or by manually typing the address in address bar conductor)

This parameter is a set of bit flags. Each bit corresponds to one of 26 possible drive names. Each disk is assigned values (hex): A -1; B – 2; C – 4, etc. To hide the drives you need, you need to add up these bits. The tricky part is converting the binary value to hexadecimal. Here is a small list of possible values:

0x03FFFFFF Hides all icons
0x3 Hides only drives A and B
0x4 Hides drive C only
0x8 Hides drive D only
0x7 Hides only drives A, B and C
0xF Hides drives A, B, C and D only
0x0 All disks are visible

You can also use the decimal system. See advice below.

Denying access to the contents of selected drives

You can not hide the drive icons themselves, but prevent the user from accessing files on specified drives through Explorer, My Computer, Run, or the Dir command. Open the registry and create a NoViewOnDrive DWORD value under
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
containing a bitmask for disks. For example, drive A has bit 1, drive C has bit 4, drive D has bit 8. Thus, to hide drives A and D, you need to add their values 1 (A) + 8 (D) and set the value to 9.

List of all drives: 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 wheels: 67108863

Method No. 2. Hiding disks through group policies

Go to Group Policy Management
User Configuration
Administrative Templates
Windows components
Conductor
Open the policy: Hide selected drives from My Computer window
Set the value to enabled and select the option

But here’s the catch: standard policy can only hide standard wheels or all at once. If that's what you needed, great. I needed to hide the Z drive, and for this I need to go a different way, and therefore...

Method number 3. Combined method: GPO + registry

We also open group policies
User Configuration
Settings
Windows Configuration
Registry
Right click on empty space, then Create – Registry element

And here we set the following parameters. I will duplicate it with text: Bush HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Partition path Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, Parameter name NoDrives,Parameter type REG_DWORD, value to hide the Z drive 33554432 . For other disks we calculate the value according to the rule from

Instructions

There are several ways to open a hidden section. One of the simplest is to use standard means operating system. Click Start. Select All Programs, then Accessories. IN standard programs find and open command prompt. IN command line enter diskmgmt.msc. Press Enter. After a few seconds, the Disk Management window will open.

This window displays all hard disk partitions, including hidden ones. Find the hidden section you need in this window. Right-click on it. Then in the resulting context menu select "Open".

If the first method did not help you, then try the next one. First, you need to download the PartitionMagic program from the Internet to work with hard drives. The program is commercial, but there is trial period its use, which is one month. After downloading, install the application on your computer. Reboot your machine.

Launch PartitionMagic. In the main menu of the program there is a list of all hard drive partitions. Right-click on the hidden section. After that, select “Open” from the context menu.

Also in some cases this method can help. Click Start. Open the "Control Panel" shortcut. In the Control Panel window, select the Folder Options shortcut. After that, go to the “View” tab, in which find the “Hidden files and folders” section. In this section, check the box “Show hidden files, folders and disks."

Next, in the “Files and Folders” section, find the line “Hide protected files and folders.” Tag her. After selecting all the options, click Apply and OK. Close all windows. Restart your computer. Now hidden hard section The disk should be accessible and you can open it.

Sources:

hidden section on asus laptop

Sometimes it can be interesting how the system that we used to call a computer or laptop works and how many resources it has in stock. In particular, whether there are hidden unused partitions on the hard drive. You can find out using Acronis programs Disk Director 11 Home.

You will need

- Acronis Disk Director 11 Home program.

Instructions

Download the Acronis Disk Director 11 Home utility from the official developer website (the link to the download page is at the end of the article). When installing the program, in the third dialog box, specify “Install trial version“- its functionality will be sufficient to solve your problem. Click “Next” and in the new window be sure to fill out the fields “First Name”, “Last Name” and “ Email address"(possibly fake). In the following windows, feel free to click “Next”, and in the final one, “Continue”. The installation of the program will begin, after which the program icon will appear on the desktop.

Launch Acronis Disk Director 11 Home double click by this icon. If your operating system- This Windows Vista or Windows 7 and in addition to this you have increased security settings, a window may appear asking for permission to make changes to the program being launched. Click “Yes” on it.

Now leave for a while running program at rest, but open. Click the Start button in the taskbar and then My Computer (or just Computer if you have Windows Vista or Windows 7). Remember how many logical partitions (volumes) your HDD(or hard disks, if there are several of them) and what names they have (C, D, F, etc.).

Go back to Acronis Disk Director 11 Home. The main part of the program is occupied by a field in which the logical partitions (volumes) of the system are indicated. Compare their number and names with what you saw in the “My Computer” (“Computer”) window. Those partitions that are present in the Acronis program window and are not in “My Computer” - . They can be either very small, 7-8 megabytes, or large, several gigabytes. Secondly, as a rule, operating system distributions are stored in case of failure.

Video on the topic

Sources:

link to the page Acronis downloads Disk Director 11 Home

Hidden partitions in laptops are created by the manufacturer to restore the operating system. As a rule, they store an image of a partition with an installed operating system, which includes all the drivers and firmware necessary for the laptop to operate. Please note that in case of deletion hidden section If the system breaks down, you will have to completely manually install the operating system. After deletion, you will not be able to use the function automatic recovery systems. If you are determined to delete the hidden partition, you will need special program for working with disks and partitions.

You will need

A program for working with hard drives, for example, Acronis Dick Director Home.

Instructions

Currently, there are many programs designed to work with disk partitions. They are similar in functionality, the only difference is separate options and interface design. Let's look at deleting a hidden partition using the example of one of the most popular tools - Acronis Dick Director Home. First of all, you need to install this program on your . Complete program. After installation, you need to run it. In a few seconds, the main menu of the program will open in front of you.

In the window that opens, you will see a list of all your hard drives and partitions. At the top they are in the form of a list, where they indicate: type, capacity, activity and file system. A - c graphical form, with a visual display of busy and free space. Among these sections you need to find the hidden one. To do this, you can open the “My Computer” shortcut and see which partitions are working. There are usually from one, to two or three. (C – system, D – usually the section with user information). In the Acronis Dick Director Home window, select the partition that is in the program, but is not visible in the “My Computer” window - it will most likely be a hidden partition.

Be careful if you have an operating room Windows system 7! In this case, in the Acronis Dick Director Home window you will see the following section: “Reserved by the system (partition letter)”. This is the system partition where the boot area is located! It is also not visible in “My”, but it cannot be deleted! Its volume is 100 megabytes.

After the hidden section, click on it once with the left mouse button. A menu of operations available for this section. Among them, select “Delete Volume”. In the window that appears, click “Ok”.

After this, you need to apply the operations performed. In the left top corner in the main window, click “Apply scheduled operations.” In the window that opens, click continue. After the program has been running for some time, a window will appear notifying you that all operations have been completed. Click OK. The hidden section no longer exists. Next, if desired, you can create a custom volume in place of the hidden partition or attach it to one of the existing ones.

Video on the topic

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