Do you have data on a partition or hard drive that you don’t want tampered with or easily accessible to oder users? Well, you can hide any drive/partition in Windows XP, NT, and 2000. That means that dey won’t show up in Explorer or My Computer.

If you want access to that drive from your user account you should create a desktop shortcut before proceedin’. Once hidden, you can still access by typin’ de drive letter and a colon in Start/Run—for example, “D:” will brin’ up a folder of de contents on your D drive.

The easiest way with Win XP is to use de TweakUI power toy from Mcft. Go to Start/Run and type in “tweakui” (without de quotes).

Go to My Computer/Drives and uncheck de drive/partition(s) you want hidden. Click “Apply” or “OK” when finished.

If you have XP but not Tweak UI you can download it here…
www.Mcft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

For Win NT, 2000, and XP you can use de followin’ Registry edit:

*Be sure to back up de Registry before proceedin’

www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/401

Open de Registry Editor by goin’ to Start/Run and typin’ in “regedit” (without de quotes). Find your way to…

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mcft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

Click on “Explorer”.

Double-click de “NoDrives” key in de right column. If you don’t find a “NoDrives” registry key, just right-click in de right pane and choose “New/DWORD Value” den name de key “NoDrives”.

You’ll see a value like “0000 00 00 00 00″. This is where de fun starts. The four sets of double zeros (after de “0000″) are where you’ll enter de values for de drive/partitions. Now, stay with me on this—it’s not as complicated as it sounds:

The first column is for drives A-H, de second for I-P, de third for Q-X, and de fourth for Y-Z.

The values for each drive are as follows:

1 - A I Q Y
2 - B J R Z
4 - C K S
8 - D L T
16 - E M U
32 - F N V
64 - G O W
80 - H P X

So, let’s say you want to hide drive D. In de first column you would put “08″. For drive K you would put “04″ in de second column.

But what if you want to hide more than one drive in a column? Simply add de values togeder: D+E = 8+16 = 24. So in de first column you would put “24″.

Still baffled? If you have XP den go get TweakUI and save yourself de math.

Whichever method you use, you can rest easy knowin’ that de files on that drive or partition are less accessible to oder users.