Lock Your Drives Without Using Any Softwares

Many of us like to have privacy for our computer. There may be files which we want to keep safe and hidden from others. There may also be some files which we don’t want others to find out like some important documents, office files,video’s etc.

Is there a way to hide my drives? Can I do it without the use of any softwares? Can I unlock my drives after locking it? etc, May be some of your questions when you see this post for the first time. Well, my answer is yes. We can either use a software to lock the drives or we can do it manually. In this post I am going to post on how to lock the Drives manually and vice versa.

1. Lock Drives via Registry Editor:

STEP 1 : Open Registry (go to run command, then type “regedit” and press ENTER)
STEP 2 : Then navigate to this key

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurre ntVersionPoliciesExplorer

STEP 3 : Now right click in right side panel and create DWORD Value (blue color)
Rename it as “NoViewOnDrive” (for locking drive)
or
Rename it as “NoDrives” (for Hiding drive)
STEP 4 : Double click on the newly renamed DWORD and put the numbers mentioned below corectly to lock your desired drives and then Click OK.

FOR A Drive : 1
FOR C Drive : 4
FOR D Drive : 8
FOR E Drive : 16
FOR F Drive : 32
FOR G Drive: 64
FOR H Drive: 128

STEP 5 : Finally restart or log-off the computer to take effect of the changes done.

Keep in mind that “0” (zero) is Default Value to Disable or remove this Setting.

2. Lock Drives via Group Policy:

STEP 1 : Goto “RUN” and type “gpedit.msc”
STEP 2 : A window will be opened (Group Policy). On the left sidebar there would be two options.
STEP 3 : Drop down the “user configuration” and again drop down sub menu “Administrative Templetes” and again drop down another sub menu “Windows Components” and click on “Windows Explorer“.
STEP 4 : Right click on “Prevent Access To Drives From My Computers” and then click on properties.
STEP 5 : Click on the radio button “Enabled” and you can select any option in the menu.

To Disable the change made Follow the same procedure. Then click on radio button “Disable“.

If you have any doubts regarding my post please don’t hesitate to ask. Also let me know if any of the above mentioned trick doesn’t work for you.