Hide unnecessary drives in Windows 7

Windows 7 is full of new personalization settings not always easy to discover and still unknown to most users. Among them, two parameters control the display of disk drives: one hides unnecessary drives, the other hides the letters of the drives.

Windows 7 inherits 23 years of Windows experience and long habits of users reluctant to change. However, the system tries in many ways to dispose of some ancestral burdens without disrupting users. Even though the options most disturbing is not enabled by default.

Settings more or less are kept secret in Windows 7, as in previous editions of Windows. This is done because they may disturb some readers and inspire others.

1: Hide empty drives

Users of Vista and XP knows that Windows assigns each player a unique letter even if these hard drives are empty. With Windows 7, it is possible to automatically hide the empty drives. This is the default setting of the system on a new installation. To check whether or not empty flash drives gets displayed, do the following:

• Press [Windows] key to display the Start menu.
• In the search field type "Folder Options" and validate by [Enter]
• Open the View tab
• In the options list, locate the line "Hide empty drives in the computer"
  
  • If the box is checked, readers will no longer appear empty in the explorer
  • If the box is unchecked, Windows 7 will behave like XP and Vista and will show all drives

Hide the letters of disk drives

There was a time, when the discs did not have a name and were recognizable by their drive letter. But since several generations of Windows, it is now possible to name and customize each disc.

To gain visibility and improve the provision of the icons in the explorer, it is now possible to ask Windows not to display these letters!

• Press [Windows] key to display the Start menu.
• In the search field type "Folder Options" and validate by [Enter]
• Open the View tab
• In the options list, locate the line "show drive letters"
  
  • If the box is checked, Windows 7 will behave like XP and Vista and display the letters.
  • If the box is unchecked, Windows 7 will adopt a more modern and simply the names of the disks.