Hide Hard Disk Partition in Windows XP, 7 & 8.1

Hiding a hard drive volume or a hard disk partition in Windows computer (XP, Win 7, Win 8 & Win 8.1) could be an easy and effective way of preventing the personal data on a hard drive.

Don’t worry this trick just hide hard disk partitions on a computer temporarily and can be also roll out; you can unhide or show hidden hard drive partition in the future if needed.

Hiding a hard disk volume doesn’t mean it will delete or format the hard drive volume. This is a simple and safe Windows command to hide a hard disk partition from all users. So let’s see this computer tutorial to learn how to hide or unhide hard disk partition in Windows XP, Win 7 and Win 8 & 8.1.

How to Hide, Show Hard Disk Partition in Windows XP, Win 7, Win 8 & 8.1 – Diskpart Command-Line Utility

Extremely useful ways to hide hard drive volumes on your computer for security reasons. This insures the safety of your personal data from unauthorized persons.

Below are some step-by-step instructions to hide hard disk partition on your Windows system without using any third-party tool and software.

1. Go to Start Menu = > Run = > type diskpart & hit enter (a cmd window will be open).

2. Type list volume & hit enter. You will get “disk partition” details.

3. Suppose you want to hide drive D, then type select volume 3 & hit enter (volume number may be differ on your PC, just select according to your disk partition list). A message will appear in the dos that “Volume 3 is the selected volume”.

4. Type remove letter D and hit enter. A message will be appear in the dos that “DiskPart successfully removed the drive letter or mount point”.

Now the D hard disk partition is successfully removed from your computer. Just open “My Computer” and see it yourself. Your data is now safe from greedy eyes. Sometimes this trick requires to reboot the system to apply the changes.

I have personally tried this trick to hide hard disk partition in Windows XP Pro and Win 7. It’s working fine in the both of operating systems.

NOTE: To rollback the default settings or show hidden drive, simply repeat the entire process by third step and in the fourth step type “assign” instead of “remove”. The “assign” means, it will unhide the hidden hard disk partition on your machine.

How to Hide Hard Disk Partition – Windows Disk Management Software

This is another method to hide (Dismount) or show hard disk partition using Windows disk management software. Hey! this is an inbuilt tool in Windows operating system, you don’t need to download or install it.

You need administrator access to your computer to perform this action. Windows disk management tool allows users to hide drisk partition easily except that particular drive on which OS has installed (most likely it’s C drive). So let’s get started.

1. Right click on “My Computer” and select “Manage“. Now select the “Disk management” under “Storage” from left panel.

Alternatively you can also press Ctrl + R to open Run box and type diskmgmt.msc to instantly launch disk management system.

2. Right click on the partition that you want to hide and select Change Drive Letter and Paths…

3. Just click on Remove button. Don’t worry it will just remove the drive letter, you’re data will be remain safe.

4. Once you click the remove you will get a warning alert “Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Are you sure you want to remove this drive letter?“. Simply click on yes and OK.

It’s done! Your selected drive is now hidden. Nobody will be able to see that particular volume on your system until and unless you unhide the drive.

Want to show hidden hard drive? Open Disk Management tool and right click on that hidden drive (the hidden hard disk partition must not contain any alphabet letter) and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths..“.

Click on Add button to add a letter and paths to the hidden drive.

Finally, choose a alphabet letter to get that assign to the hidden volume name and press OK. Now the hidden disk partition is available again for all users.

Give it a try to remove hard disk partition on your machine and share your experience with us via comments below about the above tutorial on how to hide or show hard drive from other users.