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Hide other drives from different partitions

2K views 21 replies 3 participants last post by  Done_Fishin 
#1 ·
Hi all

I have two hard drives in my computer, each with an install of XP, running dual booted. My question is how do I disable access to the other drives? As in, if I am running one version of windows I don't want the ability to access the other hard drive, and vice versa. I mean no access at all, programs cannot read/write to them, etc.

If I disable the other drive from within one version of windows then it isn't happy when I then try to run from that drive.

I'm not great with words so I hope that made the slightest iota of sense :)
 
#2 ·
I'm not sure that it is actually possible unless you have two different user names, one for each drive / installation then set permissions for access etc to the drives (not sure if it works with drives but most definitely with contents) to only a single user in each drive.

Personally I would NOT have created a dual boot system for what you are trying to do, just 2 installs and disconnect the drive I didn't want to boot from.

lets see what the other guys have to say .. I also might learn something new, it wouldn't be the first time! :smile:
 
#3 ·
Well to be honest that was my original plan as I do need them to be isolated but the other half-wits who use this computer would cry at the thought of disconnecting/reconnecting drives so I tried to avoid it. Now the computer is confused as to which drive is the true C drive and install files are going here there and everywhere!
The original drive had someone do something weird wit it; had the C partition as a 2 GB section storing seemingly random data (no system files or recovery files) and everything else on D drive (including windows) so when I installed Windows on the new drive it sets the active system drive letter to D so things that auto install to C are going to this tiny partition.
then tried following a stupid tutorial on how to change drive letters (not advisable for system drives!) And it would no longer boot so I did a recovery on it and it came back as a C drive but bios still sees it as D, and when I make any changes to boot.ini it won't save because it is on the tiny C partition but gets confused because the other C drive is causing issues... BRAIN MELT!

The original drive has to stay as it is as it has a lot of historic measurement data on it, however I am reformatting the new drive and am gonna try again with the disconnect method

I apologise for the rant but this has been bugging for days!
 
#4 · (Edited)
The Bios doesn't choose Drive letters. Drive letters are chosen my the Windows OS.
You cannot change the drive letter of a Windows System drive that you are booted into. If it is not a drive you have booted into, you can change the drive letter.
If you are going to reinstall to a new HDD, then disconnect the original HDD before installing Windows on a new HDD. Once Windows is installed, Boot the computer and the new HDD will be C:. shut down the computer, with the new HDD attached, attach the old HDD, Restart and your new drive will be C: and the old HDD should come up as drives D: and E: You can change the D: and E: drive letters in Disk Management to drive letters not being used. If you have problems booting, You may need to boot into Setup (Bios) and make sure that the old HDD is not in the Boot order, or is after the New HDD in the boot order.
 
#7 ·
That's right

My idea about how you could manage the dual boot system is explained here

Restricting access to hard drive / User Permissions

Start->Control Panel->Folder Options

and then goto the View tab at the top. At the very bottom (for me) it says Use Simple File Sharing and it is mostly likely checked if you haven't unchecked it yourself.

Anyway uncheck that and what will happen is when you right click on any folders, files, or hard drives there will now be a security tab which will allow you to do things that are similiar to the Linux system. You can set read, write, and execute permission to groups or users. So what I did was set all permission fo the user Guest to be denied for my drive D. It works great. I tested it out and from the guest user and they get a popup that simply says ACCESS DENIED when they try to access the drive.

Anyway thanks for looking into it, took me forever to figure out what I just typed, but I believe it is a great way since its built in.
although I wouldn't have thought about the part that says
Start->Control Panel->Folder Options


and then goto the View tab at the top. At the very bottom (for me) it says Use Simple File Sharing and it is mostly likely checked if you haven't unchecked it yourself.

Anyway uncheck that and what will happen is when you right click on any folders, files, or hard drives there will now be a security tab which will allow you to do things that are similiar to the Linux system.
I would just have gone straight for the files and folder permissions

It seems that there is a way to do what you want but either from servers or from Win7 Win8 but not all versions

How To Restrict Access To Drives In My Computer In Windows

How To Restrict Access To Drives In My Computer In Windows

If you have a shared or public computer that several people use, you might want to restrict access to it’s drives to prevent users from deleting important data. Today we look at restricting access to some or all drives on the machine using Local Group Policy.

Note: This method uses Local Group Policy Editor which is not available on home versions of Windows 7 or Vista

First type gpedit.msc in the search box of the Start Menu and hit Enter.
 
#9 ·
Bios should automatically update according to which drives are present and if only one drive is there will direct the PC to boot from it.

In the event that you have both drives at the same time you will have to access BIOS and set which drive you want to be the boot drive. This might happen if for some reason the drive doesn't boot and you want to access it for test/repair purposes using the drive that does boot.
 
#10 ·
Thank you all.

One of the other issues I now have is that in the boot priority list all I have is Diskette (floppy), master, or cd rom. Yet it still defaults to Sata. I can activate all drives in the drive setup but it won't see it in boot priority. If I F12 it I can manually select boot source but I can't set it in the bios. There is no option for it yet it is defaulting to Sata anyway
 
#15 ·
if you have both drives installed just see if there is an option to select individually the boot drive. If you have that option you are home free. you'll just have to remember when the occasion arises that you need to select that option when you are troubleshooting one of the drives.
 
#16 ·
Right so here are the pics of my bis setup. I have reinstalled windows on the new drive with the old drive detached so my drive letters are ok but now how do I get it to default to IDE? I can press F12 at startup and manually boot from IDE but defaulting would be the best option
 

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#18 ·
It would normally be under Hard-Disk Drive Sequence, but This is a very old Bios that does not allow you to choose which HDD to boot from. It probably won't help, but you can try updating the Bios from the computer manufacturers support/download drivers site.
 
#20 ·
Well at least you have a solution to your main problem of not mixing / seeing both drives at the same time.

the only other thing I can suggest is if you want to have both drives running at the same time is to prohibit the one you don't want to boot by making the "Active" partition inactive. you can always make it active again when you have finished. But this may not stop BIOS from trying to boot from that drive and leave you with a flashing cursor at the top of a black screen
 
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