Resolved How to hide a drive from Win7

I have Win7 and Vista seperately installed on two hard drives. I am using EasyBCD to dual boot them. For various reasons I want to keep things this way but it means that whenever one OS is loaded, all the folders and files on the other drive are also visible.

I would like to be able to securely prevent any possibility of any access to the Vista drive when booted into Win7. I remember an old boot manager called SBM I used to use with Windows 98, XP and Linux that could hide any partition from the others at bootup. Very useful.

Is there any way to do something similar with my current setup?

 

Thanks for the reply. I saw this when I did a search but I am hoping for something more robust. My Vista installation is normally kept off-line and it contains things I don't want anyone to be able to get at if I am the victim of a major attack. My goal is to keep it completely off-line and impenetrable to any form of remote probing. I want the drive to be both invisible and unreadable in every case except a cold reboot into Vista.

 

Impenetrable would require disconnecting power to the drive. Maybe a simple toggle switch for example, with a lock (key) even.

Paragon's Rescue Kit 14 Free Edition can hide/unhide partitions.

 

Why don't you just encrypt the Vista drive ?

 

Even if encrypted, it could still be destroyed remotely.

 

Thanks for taking the trouble to think with me on this. For security purposes I always keep one computer off-line that I use for most things and another computer mainly just for Internet stuff. I know this is old-fashioned by today's standards but it has always worked well for me and it suits my needs. I am not a fan of the cloud.

The problem has arisen since my Vista computer died and I bought a replacement. It already had Win 7 pre-installed so I just added the Vista drive and set it up for dual boot. Then I started using Win 7 for some Internet things and have now run up against the law of unintended consequences because it suddenly dawned on me that all the insecure stuff on the Vista drive that I don't want to share with the world is suddenly there for the taking by any evil invaders. That is why I want to lock it down when running Win 7.

The idea of switching the power to it isn't completely crazy but I would prefer a software solution, like a way to hide the partition on boot-up so Win 7 doesn't know it is there. That would be ideal.

 

Paragon's Rescue Kit 14 Free Edition can hide/unhide partitions.

 

Sorry I overlooked your first response for some reason. I will give this a try.

 

Okay I have decided on something else unless someone can tell me why this is not a good idea. I am using diskmgmt.msc in Win 7 to remove the drive letters from the partitions I want to keep out of reach. I suppose this could be undone by an attacker but it seems reasonably secure to me. Am I wrong?

 

Load Windows Powershell and check to see which Volume does not have a drive letter:

powershell
"list vol" | diskpart​

For example:

Code:

C:\>[b]powershell[/b]
Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS C:\>[b] "list vol" | diskpart[/b]

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: SpywareDr

DISKPART>
    Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     D                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1         System Rese  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2     C   Intel120GBS  NTFS   Partition    111 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 3         HD_1TB       NTFS   Partition    931 GB  Healthy

DISKPART> PS C:\>

Since it's rather obvious that "Volume 3" is a large partition without a drive letter assigned, then do a:

"select vol 3 ", "assign letter=E ", "list vol" | diskpart​

You should now see:

Code:

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     D                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1         System Rese  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2     C   Intel120GBS  NTFS   Partition    111 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 3     E   HD_1TB       NTFS   Partition    931 GB  Healthy    

DISKPART> PS C:\>

"Volume 3" has been assigned drive letter "E ".

 

Got it. Thanks for the heads up.

 

No problem.