Windows Vista Registry Trick: Hide Hard Disk Drive's from Computer

It is possible to hide a hard disk drive letter using a simple registry trick in Windows Vista, preventing it from showing up in applications and Windows Explorer. However, this will not prevent you from access files from it manually (by browsing directly to it by typing "D:" for example). This can be useful to hide files quickly and easily in an effective way.The steps for this registry tweak is given:

• Click on Windows Vista Start and click on the Run tab.
• Type regedit.exe into the Run box(Press WINDOWS KEY + R to access this) or in the start menu Search box and click OK.
• This will opens the Windows Vista registry editor and navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

• Add a new DWORD 32-bit value named NoDrives into the right-hand pane of the Windows Vista registry editor, and then double-click to open it up.
• To set the registry key value, you’ll first need to change the option of the Base to Decimal, and then you can enter any decimal value you want.This value depends on the drives you wish to hide, and is created by adding the numbers for each drive you wish to hide from the list below. Click OK once you have entered this number.

For example, to hide hard disk drive D in your Windows Vista computer, you would enter a decimal value of 8 in the value field. To hide both the hard disk drives D and E in your computer, you would enter a decimal value of 24 (8+16):

The chart of disk drive numbers is given below:
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 = 16384
P = 32768
Q = 65536
R = 131072
S = 262144
T = 524288
U = 1048576
V = 2097152
W = 4194304
X = 8388608
Y =16777216
Z = 33554432
All drives = 67108863

Once you restart your computer, the selected hard disk drives should be hidden in your Windows Vista computer. If you wish to remove the hidden drives, browse to the No Drives registry value and delete it.

Note that it is better to create a full registry backup before the Windows registry tweaks,because if any stability problem occurs restore the registry back.So it is a good practice to all,working with windows registry.