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Hiding drives from "motivated" users

Preventing accidents is what you're all about. Given that, you might want to hide certain drives from users if they don't absolutely need access. NT enables you to hide drives from the obvious access points (Explorer and My Computer), although a motivated user could still access them from Start | Run. But you can change that.

1. Start up the registry editor and follow these steps:
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
3. Right-click within the right pane and choose New | DWORD Value.
4. Name the new key Hidden and press [Enter] twice.
5. Within the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, select Decimal.
6. Enter the number corresponding to the drive you want to hide (A: 1, B: 2, C: 4, D: 8, E: 16, etc.). If you want to hide more than one drive, add the numeric values assigned to the drives. For example, to hide drives D and E, enter 24.
7. Exit the registry.

The next time the PC boots up, the drives will be hidden from casual browsers.

Note: Please remember that registry editing can be risky, so be sure you have a verified backup before you begin.