Hide partition (Win 2k)

[killermink]

Hello,

I have my page/swap file on a different partition, and I would like to hide it, mainly for asthetic reasons!! Anyway, when I choose hide in Partition Magic, it says that drive letters will change, so does that mean that Win2K will not be able to find it?

Cheers,
Killermink

[kef999]

I use another Powerquest application - Drive Image - where you can supposedly hide partitions. However, I found after a lot of experimenting that the only way you can fully hide partitions is to do it in the following way:

Open Disk Management in Win2K (Control Panel/Computer management) and unmap the partition(s) you want to hide, ie right-click the partition, select Change Drive Letter, then remove the existing drive letter. (You might need to reboot, but reboot anyway). Next, open Partition Magic, Drive Image or whatever and use the Hide function there as well. If necessary, boot back into Windows. Open Windows Explorer, to view your visible partitions. The chosen ones should now be hidden but your overall drive letters should not have changed.

You can test afterward for whether one or both of my described operations truly hides the partition(s) by booting to a C prompt and seeing if you can access the partition(s). I think you'll find that access to the partition(s) is barred only if you use both Disk Management AND PM (or DI) to hide. Do remember that when you boot using a startup floppy, a RAMdrive gets temporarily assigned a drive letter, so be careful that you choose the correct partition to access.

To unhide, just reverse the process, starting in PM.

I hope this helps.