help! need help protecting hard drives from my family

[MrDudeMan]

i have 3 hard drives in my computer and i would like to password protect them. people in my house use my computer without asking and things always are getting deleted and its making me mad.

how can i hide the hard drives and/or password protect them? the main drive does not need hidden as it has nothing on it but programs. but, my other two drives have years of info and songs and everything ive collected.

and no, im not talking about porn.

help!

 

[WhoDeeny]

Set up profiles. give yourself admin rights, and everyone else limited access. If you're using Win XP, turn the guest account on...

 

[MrDudeMan]

ahhhh great idea. i never thought of that. i am going to work on that right now.


does anyone else have a different way to do it if i cant get the accounts to work?

thanks

 

[tenoc]

the main drive does not need hidden as it has nothing on it but programs

Yeah, programs like Windoze and its files. Nothing to worry about deleting there!

A buddy has kids who bolix-up his system. I fix it. He buys me beer. I love his kids!

 

[DanFungus]

yeha, just create another account , and if the drives are NTFS, right click on the drive in my computer, goto properties, security and add their user account, and hit deny for all of the boxes. for fat32, it's about the same, but goto sharing tab instead of security.

 

[MrDudeMan]

no they dont delete programs....

i setup accounts and gave myself admin and everyone else limited, but i cant disable those drives in their profiles. i want them to just see the main drive, not the spares.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
no they dont delete programs....

i setup accounts and gave myself admin and everyone else limited, but i cant disable those drives in their profiles. i want them to just see the main drive, not the spares.

You can't hide it, but you can make it so they don't have rights to it.

Viper GTS

 

[corkyg]

Yes, you can hide a hard drive. Any of the Powerquest products will do it. But - consider this.

Remove the sensitive drive/drives from inside you computer and install a mobile rack in a 5.25-in bay. Then put those drives in matching trays that you can insert into that rack when you want to use them. Other wise, just remove them and lock them up.

This is a common solution in a secure environment where classified data is often involved. The drive trays are removed when not in use and locked in a safe.

 

[canadianpsycho]

Originally posted by: corky-g
Yes, you can hide a hard drive. Any of the Powerquest products will do it. But - consider this.

Remove the sensitive drive/drives from inside you computer and install a mobile rack in a 5.25-in bay. Then put those drives in matching trays that you can insert into that rack when you want to use them. Other wise, just remove them and lock them up.

This is a common solution in a secure environment where classified data is often involved. The drive trays are removed when not in use and locked in a safe.

Novel idea, but a bit extreme for a family used pc, no?

 

[PowerEngineer]

This sounds familiar...

I've been trying to do the same myself now for several years in Windows 95/98/ME. Certainly can't do it with anything built into these, and never found any security add-in's that didn't cause more trouble than they were worth. I now have W2K as a dual boot, but haven't explored it's "administrative" potential yet. Actually, I've found it's nice to have W2K all to myself. I'm toyed with the idea of leaving the other "users" on Windows ME (where they can screw things up without affecting me) and converting my disk partitions to NSF (so that they can't see them).

 

[Viper96720]

 

[Budman]

Setup a password to acess your bios,then disable the hd you want hidden in the bios.

Simple yet effective.

 

[MrDudeMan]

haha those are some funny ideas

i think the best thing to do is what you guys said about they can see it but they dont have rights to it


i have explored and can not figure out how to do this....


help again please

 

[Adul]

you need to do a few things first.

first go to explorer(not IE) and options. turn off simple file sharing. Now you can have the more advanced security options showing.


right click the hardware and choose the security Tab. You shall see a list of groups and usernames thatave access to the hard drive. If you want to be most anal, just removing everything and just add your login name only.

click on the advanced tab now.

under permission check on the check box at the bottom

go to owner

check on the checkbox there has well. click ok and apply the changes. do this for any file, drive, or folder you wish for them not to have access to

 

[Kazer]

If you're simply trying to keep files from being deleted, your best bet would probably be to exercise some healthy communication with your family by informing them not to.

If you're trying to hide your porn then your best bet would be to either disable the drives in the bios (takes two seconds on startup to re-enable them) when you're done using the computer.

If your family is marginally computer savvy or they use files on the spare drives, search around on cnet's download.com for file hiding utilities. They certainly aren't foolproof, but you can hide your porn reliably with them.

Furthermore, if you've got the capability to use NTFS then check out google on how to utilize it, that is what it is made for.

-Tyler

 

[MrDudeMan]

read from above...not trying to hide porn

mostly financial stuff


thanks for those last two posts guys....i am going to go mess around with that now...they were extremely helpful