Win2k still sees hard drive w/bios setting for it is "none", how to hide it?

[Pharmdeity]

I've got two hard drives and two cd drives on my win2k-pro system built on a soyo SY-7VCA motherboard. The two hard drives on primary IDE are set as master and slave, with the two CD drives set on 2ndary IDE as master and a slave.

With win98 I could set the slave hard drive to "none" and win98 wouldn't see it.

With win2k pro when I set the slave hard drive to "none" the OS still sees the hard drive, and it's fully functional. I tried various settings for sharing and user priviledges (sp?) without the desired result (which is NOT allowing others to have any access to the slave drive).

I'm new to win2k. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
pharmdeity

 

[Budman]

Unplug the drive on the ide cable.

problem solved.

 

[velvetfreak]

Little anecdote here. First time I tried installing Win2k (beta 2? RC1? can't remember) I unplugged the power to my second drive (a Quantum EX 6.4GB). Much to my surprise/amusement, the drive was successfully identified in Device Manager with a warning to check the hardware!

 

[Pharmdeity]

I was wishing for a slightly more elegant solution to the problem. Opening, unplugging, and reclosing my case isn't very practical. I access the drive frequently. Is there anyway to limit access of drives to specific users in win2000?

Thanks for the input.

 

[DaveJ]

Sure there is... if you use NTFS for your filesystem there are all sorts of security options. The easiest way to manage the drive you want to "unplug" for certain people just create each person an account, and restrict access to the accounts you want to have access.

The easier way might be to buy a removable drive bay (DaveH in the FS forum has a bunch for $12 each) and just physically remove the drive.

Dave

 

[AndyHui]

Win2K bypasses the BIOS settings and can actually detect hard drives without them being specified in the BIOS.

NTFS and removable drive bays are good options.

 

[velvetfreak]

I have a slightly more elegant way for you to control the access... (no opening the box with this one)

Disk Management is under Computer Management\Storage. From there you can right-click the selected drive to Change Drive Letter, and delete the drive letter. This should give you the result you intended with the BIOS setting.

 

[mikeg]

Well you can just go to the device manager and disable the IDE channel that you are not using. it is under the IDe controller setup. Just dissable the channel that you want.