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How do I hide the System Reserved partition from the Windows Explorer?

On the above screenshot, I want to get rid of System Reserved (D:). How do I do that?

I will never need to access it from there, why would I need the entry then?

PS: I want to hide it, not delete it.

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Remove the drive letter for the system reserved partition. If you have a multi-boot system, this could cause problems depending on where your system boots from.

To remove the drive letter and hide the partition from explorer and my computer:

  1. Open Computer management on the local computer by right clicking on Computer in Windows Explorer and choose manage. Then click on Disk Management in the left hand pane.

    (Or just type diskmgmt.msc into the run dialog)

  2. Right click on the shaded area for Drive D: System reserved in the lower right hand window.

  3. Click on Change drive letter or paths

  4. Highlight D and click remove

If you receive error messages that the drive might be in use or that programs might not run correctly, don't panic. It is OK to remove the drive letter. Once a letter is not assigned, the drive will not appear in windows explorer.

This works in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.

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  • 1
    "If you have a multi-boot system, this could cause problems depending on where your system boots from. " <- could you elaborate on that part? In what circumstances might that cause problems, and why? – sundar - Reinstate Monica Aug 24 '18 at 18:44
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    Sure, this post was written at a time when Windows XP was still actively supported, and a dual boot bios/CSM system with Windows XP and a later Vista, 7, etc, could refuse to boot if the ntldr for XP was located in the system reserved partition. – G Koe Aug 24 '18 at 21:06
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    It's an edge case that was only likely to affect a VERY small number of people, but was worth adding a note of caution at the time. GRUB and other non NT boot loaders don't really care about Windows drive letters, except certain versions of OS/2. – G Koe Aug 24 '18 at 21:12
  • Thank you, that makes sense. I've removed the drive letter and restarted in the meantime, and (predictably) haven't had any issues. – sundar - Reinstate Monica Aug 28 '18 at 10:03
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I encountered the same issue. In DiskMgmt GUI no drive letter was assigned to the hidden system partition but in Windows Explorer it had drive letter H:

I solved it as following: In a command prompt I started DiskPart.exe, then ran:

list disk
select Disk 0
list partition
select partition 1 (the one corresponding with the hidden system drive)
remove

Now the drive letter is gone in the Explorer.

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    This was the only answer that worked for me. Worth noting that "Remove" just gets rid of the letter, it doesn't remove the partition! – xorsyst Dec 19 '16 at 11:13
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I faced the same problem. To solve it, I did the following:

  • Right click on C: Drive and select Properties
  • Now you can see the Local Disk(C:) Properties Model Dialog Box
  • Now select the tools tab feature in the Local Disk(C:) Properties Model Dialog Box
  • Now click on Check Now button and you can see the Check Disk Local Disk (C:) Model Dialog Box
  • And at last select the check box Automatically File System Errors and click on the start button.
  • Restart the computer and let the check computer file system error .

Hope it will hide the system reserved partition.

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2

In some cases - as seen in this question - removing the drive letter for the System Reserved partition can cause other partitions on that drive to not show up in Windows Explorer. To avoid that, a registry tweak must be used to maintain the drive letter but hide the drive.

Open the Registry Editor (type regedit in the Run dialog) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, creating the Explorer key if necessary. Create a new DWORD value called NoDrives. The data for that value should be a bitmask with set bits indicating a hidden drive. To hide only the A drive, set the data to 1. To hide the B drive, set the data to 2 in decimal (10 in binary) - the second bit corresponds to the B drive. Similarly, 9 would hide the D and A drives (it's 1001 in binary).

A logoff/logon cycle may be required for this change to take effect.

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  • What if E, F or W drives? – zwcloud Jul 22 '18 at 6:08
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    @zwcloud E is the fifth letter of the alphabet, so you need to set the fifth bit (add 16). For F, add 32. I think W would add 4,194,304. To hide all three of those, the final hex value would be 0x400030 if my calculations are correct. – Ben N Jul 22 '18 at 15:50
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Complete answer (changes are saved after reboot):

  1. Open Windows Powershell or Command line as Administrator

    Start -> Search -> Powershell or CMD -> Run as Administrator

  2. Open Diskpart

    diskpart

  3. Select disk

    select disk 0

  4. Identify the EFI partition showing up in Explorer

    list partition

  5. Select the EFI partition (Replace 'X' with the correct partition number):

    select partition X

  6. Remove the EFI partition's drive letter (it won't delete the partition, just remove the mount point):

    remove

  7. Exit Diskpart

    exit

  8. Open RegEdit

    Start -> Search -> Type "regedit"

  9. Find the right key/folder

    Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

  10. If the EFI partitions drive letter is still in registry, delete the value.

    For example: \DosDevices\X:

  11. Close RegEdit and reboot.

    Ref: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/window-10-efi-system-partition-and-recovery/e7389cec-f0a3-4f85-bc7e-8b22be22680b

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