How do I make a certain partition inaccessible by a user

Hello, I'm CrazyKilla

I'm planning on installing a fully new OS on a friends computer which he shares with his family, I wanted to make the OS only accessible to him by adding a password but the purpose of this is to keep his content safe. His family could still access the partition that his OS is on and delete some of his things so I want to make the drive inaccessible. I know this can be done as I've seen it done on school computers, accessing a drive will prompt you with a message saying access to this partition has been disallowed to you by the admin or something along the lines. How can this be done? Only other info I know is that files can be accessed in that partition through a shortcut, but you cannot go into the partition itself.
Also if you're a cool dude could you include some info about disabling access to .exes? The schools also had a security system that prevented you from opening any .exe file unless it is specified somehow (eg. MS office).

In the old days with MBR some boot managers, like Boot Magic, had an option to hide the OS that wasn't currently running. Either OS, once booted, would see itself as C: and not see the partition of the other OS at all.

But booting has changed in W8. There may be a registry setting to just make the entire partition invisible. I searched but found mention of the setting, but not the setting itself. Maybe someone else will remember.

No Registry setting to hide a partition. If they want to hide stuff, because you have secrets. The data is usually kept on a portable drive, that is encrypted. Or the person uses a USB stick with a Portable OS on it. Keep stuff in the cloud, or use Browser based apps for stuff.

The problem is that if they are hiding something. The family can alert the authorities. Which means you could end up causing more issues.

If he does not want people to access the machine. Use the Hard drive password option in the bios. Just make sure that he never forgets what it is.

If you are inquiring about all of this, due to illegal activities. This is not the place that we discuss activities like that.

What a suspicious mind you got broe. There may be many reasons why would somebody want to hide some files even programs. Privacy is a good enough reason, also safety, so nobody deletes important files etc. It may be enough to encrypt whole partition or drive or just some folders and files with something like this. Download TrueCrypt - MajorGeeks It would be more effective too because even a hidden partition can be accessed if nothing but by accident but encrypted one would take a lot of work to access files on.
Even more reasons if somebody has nosy family.

They're simply hiding games and brother sister fighting turns into the games being deleted.
Thanks for the program, I'll try it out.

The trouble with encrypting things is, if stuff goes wrong, you're left with gibberish. It may be an excellent program. But my fear is more of locking myself out of things than others. If someone is skilled at getting into private data they have a much better chance of decrypting the info than I do. Also if you decrypt stuff on the fly it has to be a performance hit.

Truecrypt was abandoned by the developers so use at your own risk.

So there's nothing that could be integrated into windows? The school had about a thousand different users all on one network with a gb of their own data, they could access their own 1gb partition and some partitions shared on a network, but if you attempted to enter C: then it would not allow you. Maybe it is a network thing?

Maybe if you give each one own account with password and limit access to others and only you as administrator can access everything.

Crazykilla said:

So there's nothing that could be integrated into windows? The school had about a thousand different users all on one network with a gb of their own data, they could access their own 1gb partition and some partitions shared on a network, but if you attempted to enter C: then it would not allow you. Maybe it is a network thing?

Click to expand...

No doubt they were running a domain with an administrator, or "IT Guy" to make it all work. If the people aren't trying to pry maliciously then hiding the partition should be fine. Having multiple users with game access may be a licensing issue. I'm a Pinball Wizard, not a computer gamer, so I wouldn't know about any licensing problems. Just suggesting it might be worth looking into before committing to it.