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I want to pass down my older computer to my little brother but keep part of the hard drive as one of my places to save backups. I have the HDD partitioned into 3 partitions, and all my stuff is on just one of those partitions. So ideally, I would like to make it so that his user account cannot at all access that partition. Just to block it off completely. However, on my account I would still be able to access it. If it can't be done with an entire partition, then it would be okay also to restrict or block individual folders.

How do I accomplish either of this? I've tried searching the net but I can't find it/figure it out.

The machine is running WinXP Pro 32bit.

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1 Answer 1

Here's some thoughts of stuff you could try...

First Try

I believe you can do this through registry edits. Tweak UI is a Power Toy written by Microsoft that you can use for weird things like this. You can use it to hide partitions.


  1. Login with the account your brother is to use - load up Tweak UI and hide the partition your files are going on.

  2. Login with an account for you, check if that partition is visible to you. If not, open Tweak UI and set it as such. If you can then see it as logging in as your brother again, then proceed to step 3, else you're done..

  3. Try setting up file Sharing on the partition for you, make it a hidden share that requires a login to access - and set the permissions so it's only available to your account. Then re-hide that partition. See if you can connect to it over your network - you'll have to know the share name and type it in exactly.. Something like

    \\[computer name or IP]\[hidden share name]

Failing that

So, if that stuff doesn't seem to get you anywhere, I'd probably just setup regular access permissions on that partition that keeps it reserved only for you, then store your files within an encrypted volume. For that, I prefer truecrypt.

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