Yesterday, a guy suddenly asked me that how he can hide the Ubuntu partition on Windows 8. I told him that Ubuntu or Linux partition is not readable by Windows and it got already hidden when you install Ubuntu in parallel drive to Windows. So he asked me his next question, how he can hide Windows partition in parallel with Windows itself. The answer to his query, led me to write this article.

There are various reasons why you want to hide your specified drives and in this article, I’ll show you the way to hide a particular drive or all drives or pair of drives. Hiding a drive will led you the drive inaccessible from Run dialog, Command Prompt etc. The method involves modification of registry, so its already recommended for you to create a System Restore point before proceeding.

Now, here is how to:

How To Show Or Hide Drives In Windows 10/8/7

Registry Disclaimer: The further steps will involve registry manipulation. Making mistakes while manipulating registry could affect your system adversely. So be careful while editing registry entries and create a System Restore point first.

1. Press Windows Key + R and put regedit in Run dialog box to open Registry Editor (if you’re not familiar with Registry Editor, then click here). Click OK.

2. Navigate here:

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

3. In the right pane of this location, create a new DWORD value named as NoDrives using Right click -> New -> DWORD. Double click on this newly created DWORD to modify its Value data:

4. Use the following Hexadecimal Value data to hide corresponding drives:

To hide A – 1

To hide B – 2

To hide C – 4

To hide D – 8

To hide E – 10

To hide F – 20

To hide G – 40

To hide H – 80

To hide I – 100

To hide J – 200

To hide K – 400

To hide L – 800

To hide M – 1000

To hide N – 2000

To hide O – 4000

To hide P – 8000

To hide Q – 10000

To hide R – 20000

To hide S – 40000

To hide T – 80000

To hide U – 100000

To hide V – 200000

To hide W – 400000

To hide X – 800000

To hide Y – 1000000

To hide Z – 2000000

To hide A & B only – 3

To hide A, B & C only – 7

To hide A, B, C & D only – f

To hide all drives – 3ffffff

Click OK, after inputting your desired Value data. You may close the Registry Editor now and reboot to get results.

That’s it!

6 Comments

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  • Drux

    thnnks for info.I want to know can this also done using gpo ?? I didn’t find the explorer policy in Windows 8.Are they removed?

    In vista I have done this using that policy in..

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ AFAIK, Not possible.

  • MrHostile

    There is no Explorer under Policies. Policies is empty.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Right click Policies and select New -> Key. Name the new subkey as Explorer. Now proceed as directed.

  • waqas

    it isn’t work.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ It worked fine here, suggest you to give a try once again :)

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