Hide Drives from Your Computer in Windows 7 or Vista
If you’ve got drives in My Computer that you never access, such as a USB Flash drive that you are using solely for ReadyBoost, a floppy drive, or a network drive only used for a particular piece of software, then you might want to simply hide the drive from your computer.
This tip will only hide the drive from being displayed, applications and the command prompt will still have access to it, and you can still manually browse to the folder if you type in the path.
Now what’s that floppy drive doing there?
Configure the Hidden Drives
Open up regedit.exe by using the start menu search box, and then browse down to the following key.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
If the Explorer key does not exist, you can right-click on Policies, select New Key and name it Explorer.
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.
This value is a 32 bit number, and the bits are arranged in reverse order with a value of 1 hiding that drive. For example, if we wanted to hide drives A: and F: we would arrange it like this:
| Z | Y | X | W | V | U | T | S | R | Q | P | O | N | M | L | K | J | I | H | G | F | E | D | C | B | A |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Converting 100001 to decimal we end up with a decimal value of 33 or a hex value of 0×21, so if you double-click on the key in the registry editor, choose Decimal and then enter 33 into the value field.
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.
Uninstall Tweak
To disable this tweak, simply remove the NoDrives registry key entirely.
Reference Info
Here’s a list of the values you’ll want to enter for a few different drive letters.
| Drive Letter | Decimal | Hex |
| A | 1 | 1 |
| B | 2 | 2 |
| C | 4 | 4 |
| D | 8 | 8 |
| E | 16 | 10 |
| F | 32 | 20 |
| G | 64 | 40 |
| H | 128 | 80 |
If you want to hide multiple drives, you’ll need to use the table of all the drive letters to figure out the correct binary code, and then convert that to decimal or hex. (hint: you can use the calculator in scientific mode)
Look, now that worthless floppy drive is gone!
Naturally it would be better to disable the floppy drive in your BIOS, but this tip is still valid for other types of drives.
Note that this also works on Windows XP.
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Can’t it hide virtual drives?
Try to hide H: on Windows XP and didn’t work
I’m not sure what you mean by virtual drives?
Also, did you remember to restart explorer.exe ?
I mean to drive created by DaemonTools.
yes, I’ve restarted explorer.exe
Just a tip, If you dont know how to convert between dec to bin and vice versa. Windows Calculater is your best buddy
. Switch to scientific view, select Bin(binary) type in for eg ‘100001′ , then select Dec(Decimal). Voila its converted, pure magic 
PJ: when you select between Dec / Hex on regedit’s Modify dialog, it’s convert the value on the field automatically.
Note that in XP, this is a feature of TweakUI, which under My Computer–>Drives gives a list of 26 checkboxes, A-Z, to select or not.
Come to think of it, TweakUI for Vista would be at the top of my bounty list.
Actually, you can rid of the Floppy Drive permanently…actually, im not sure of that but anyways, you can right click on the “Floppy Drive (A:)” select properties, then the hardware tab, double click on the floppy drive, and then go to driver and click the uninstall button. YAY that useless floppy drive icon (A:) is gone!!!
I use separate swap partition which I had set to drive Z: Couldn’t get Tweak UI to work. Once I found a binary to decimal converter worked like a charm. Thanks.
i bought my son a new laptop, it works fine but had to get new drivers for his external freecom hardrive.
it now works fine,the only issue we have now is when we plug in his usb memory stick vista wont find it or let it work…. its a freecom stick,but i tried mine which isnt,and thats the same….your help would be so good,he needs his stick to work, his university work is on it.and needs it daily.
regards
stephen.
Howdy Geek.
I can’t seem to get this to work on my system, Vista Ultimate x32. I am trying to hide A: and the reg entry is a one. My tweak programs that also hide drives shows A unchecked, I even hid A&B using the Group Editor. All the tools at my disposal say A: is hidden but it isn’t.
Any ideas on this one?
Just figured out my problem.
There are 3 places that have the NoDrives entry in my Registry. Two of them had the right value in them including the one you mention above. However I found another one. When I set this one to the proper value and rebooted my A: drive was gone. The key is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\Nodrives
===Quote The Geek===
“Also, did you remember to restart explorer.exe ?”
==END QUOTE===
if not he may have slight problems
I ran your procedure on my computer and it hid the correct drives on my profile. Not sure why it did not work on the other three profiles. I’m the only one with admin privileges. Any thoughts?
Nice tip, works for x64 Vista too. Only need to change the 32 bit Dword.
hey
does (need for speed mostwanted) hider work in windows vista? if yes then send me the link where i can got it … ?
i used regedit to hide my drive c… but i could not see it back even after deleting the nodrives entry..what should i do to see my drive back…
You can also disable the drive from the Device Manager. No need to uninstall the driver, no need to hack the registry, no need to reboot explorer.exe.
Ok I followed the instructions and was able to hide 1 drive but how do you hide 3 drives. I cannot add another NoDrives key for each hdd so how do I hide 3 at a time?
To hide more drives just SUM them & put into NoDrive value
Far better to use:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\Nodrives
And then the drive is hidden for all users, instead of just the user who is logged in when you run regedit.
thanks geek…
this works very fine, keep it up….
Hey, is this a “Per User” setting or an “All User” setting?
Thanks.
Thanks for the tip! I have hidden my laptop’s recovery partition!
That’s great dude, I can short out my issue. Any way I have tried with winXP so I strongly hope that it will work with my widow Vista home.
Cheers,
@CURT
Use HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE for all users.
You cannot set HKEY_CURRENT_USER policy in a non-admin user account (because otherwise non-admin users could revoke the restrictions placed on them by network admins).
Great thanks!
I just did in Windows seven and works just fine!