Howdy all, and sorry for the computer-related query here; googling hasn’t helped…
I have PC I’d like to create a hidden partition on under Windows XP. Ideally what I’d like to do is have the ability to read and write to it but have it invisible to the average computer user, i.e. not have a drive letter until I want it to. Is there a way to set up a simple batch file that would hide/unhide a partition?
I’m not planning anything illegal here, it’s just in the part of town we live in it’s not unreasonable to expect a computer to be stolen at some point and I would rather the thieves/recipients not have access to certain info - financial, personal, etc. I realize that anyone with really “l33+ $k||z” can get at anything, but I’m trying to protect myself from the other 95%.
If you just want to hide a drive letter then you can download Powertoys from Microsoft. This isn’t terribly secure, however, as anyone could discover your info by typing in random drive letters and it isn’t hidden in DOS at all.
If your information is particularly sensitive, I’d recommend using an encryption program. Sorry, I don’t have any recommendations for that. I’m sure someone else will be along to help out with that.
If you go to Disk Management in Computer Management (Control Panel, Administrative Tools), you can assign/remove drive letters, although I’d have to second looking into some sort of encryption. If you’re using NTFS, Windows can do it for you, even.
There’s a useful freeware program called E4M, which allows you to create an encrypted container file on your hard drive. After you enter a password to access it, the container file is then mounted as a virtual hard drive. You can read/write and delete to it as though it were a real disk drive and the information going to and from it is encrypted and decrypted on-the-fly.
There’s another program that does the same thing, called DriveCrypt, which has more options, but I believe it’s shareware.
PGP Disk - use version 6.x, which is still freeware. It has been used hundreds of times where I work for day to day use, even for hardcore disk-access things like software development.