You may need to hide a drive either for security reasons (to ensure that children do not have access to a backup drive, for example) or for practical reasons (if your PC has multiple memory card readers never used). Here's how to do so, under XP and Vista.

A command in the registry will tell Windows Explorer not to display some readers. Technically, the system uses a binary value of 32 bits where each bit corresponds to a reader. Bit 0 is the drive A, bit 1 in drive B, etc.. When this bit is "1" the player is hidden, otherwise it is visible.

  • Go to Start, then Run and then type regedit.
  • Deploy the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer"
  • If the DWORD (32 bit) named NoDrives does not exist, start by creating (click the right mouse button and select New then Value DWORD).
  • Double-click NoDrives to amend this item, select Base Decimal and enter into the data field the decimal value of the player to hide (e.g. 512 for the drive J: ). If you hide multiple drives, take their different decimal values and add them.



A: 1

B: 2

C: 4

D: 8

E: 16

F: 32

G: 64

H: 128

I: 256

J: 512

K: 1024

L: 2048

M: 4096

N: 8192

O: 1638

P: 32768

Q: 65536

R: 131072

S: 262144

T: 524288

U: 1048576

V: 2097152

W: 4194304

X: 8388608

Y: 16777216

Z: 33554432