How do I hide a slave drive in Windows 7

[jaytone1]

I plan on installing a slave drive in my Windows 7 computer. Idea is to be able to clone the master hard drive (drive C) to the slave drive (drive D) using Acronis. I want to hide the slave drive so that when family uses the computer, they wont see the drive so I wont have to worry about someone deleting files or screwing with the cloned drive.
how do I hide and then unhide the entire drive ?

 

[Soundmanred]

Disk management->offline

 

[Nothinman]

Just remove any drive letters or NTFS mounts from it.

 

[jaytone1]

I went into disk management and see that it is Online. But I cant find an option to make it Offline. I clicked on everything and there was no option to do that
Any idea what I am missing ?
Thanks

 

[her209]

I would just enable and disable via BIOS.

 

[ViRGE]

I would just enable and disable via BIOS.

This is the best solution. Baring that Nothinman's suggestion of just removing the drive letter through Disk Management is the next best option. Forget about the "offline" suggestion entirely.

 

[Nothinman]

I would just enable and disable via BIOS.

That requires a reboot and may or may not actually work. Disabling in the BIOS usually just affects bootup, once the OS starts it's drives probe all ports and find drives regardless of their state in the BIOS. How do you think runtime changes like hotplug work?

 

[her209]

That requires a reboot and may or may not actually work. Disabling in the BIOS usually just affects bootup, once the OS starts it's drives probe all ports and find drives regardless of their state in the BIOS. How do you think runtime changes like hotplug work?

??? Not sure what you're talking about.

When I forget to enable a SATA port in BIOS and connect a HDD into the port and try to do a scan, it doesn't get picked up.

 

[ViRGE]

??? Not sure what you're talking about.

When I forget to enable a SATA port in BIOS and connect a HDD into the port and try to do a scan, it doesn't get picked up.

I find that it's extremely motherboard dependent. My P35 board could do that, but my X58 board could not.

 

[Nothinman]

??? Not sure what you're talking about.

When I forget to enable a SATA port in BIOS and connect a HDD into the port and try to do a scan, it doesn't get picked up.

Weird, maybe Windows drivers check the BIOS status of the ports or isn't smart enough to look past it. Obviously, most of my experience is with Linux.

 

[corkyg]

Can't you go into Control Panel/Device Manager, Disk Drives/the drive and right click and select DISABLE?

You can also just pull the power connector on that drive.

 

[corkyg]

Another consideration . . . if it is a SLAVE drive, then it is PATA, not SATA, and is therefore not hotpluggable. SATA does not have SLAVES and MASTERS.

 

[Bubbaleone]

I use Acronis for creating a full clone with signature, meaning a complete and ready to boot system. At the completion of the cloning process, Acronis's bootable app emphatically states that when you shutdown from the app, the drive must be disconnected before rebooting.

corkyg is correct; unplug the drive containing the clone. Failure to do that (as I found out the hard way) results in both the operating system and the clone becoming unbootable

 

[clairienz]

For me, I simply click star, Run, and then type 'gpedit.msc' click ok.
After that a window named group policy will appear. In the right side corner click Administrative Templates, That's the time you will start change the settings.
Double click Windows Component, Windows Explorer and search for the content "Hide these specified drive in My Computer" just double click it and there you go, you can hide your drive at any time you want.

and if you want, you can visit here to search some answers for your problem.
http://www.***********/questions

 

[Modelworks]

command prompt:
DISKPART
list disk
select disk x
offline disk
exit

You can put it in a batch file for double clicking. put the number of the disk for x in select disk
to enable disk
command prompt:
DISKPART
list disk
select disk x
online disk
exit

 

[Nothinman]

command prompt:
DISKPART
list disk
select disk x
offline disk
exit

You can put it in a batch file for double clicking. put the number of the disk for x in select disk
to enable disk
command prompt:
DISKPART
list disk
select disk x
online disk
exit

Do you know if Windows disk numbers are guaranteed to be stable?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do you know if Windows disk numbers are guaranteed to be stable?

No. In Disk Management, my SSD was "Disk 0", until I installed a 1TB HD, and then it became "Disk 0", and the SSD became "Disk 1". Even though the SSD was in the first physical port on the same disk controller.

 

[Nothinman]

No. In Disk Management, my SSD was "Disk 0", until I installed a 1TB HD, and then it became "Disk 0", and the SSD became "Disk 1". Even though the SSD was in the first physical port on the same disk controller.

I didn't think so, which means that a script like that can't be trusted because if you boot up with a USB stick inserted it could shuffle all of them around.