hard drive - Hide a disk E: in "Computer" view of Windows Explorer, but still have it mounted as E:

I know how to hide a volume with DISKMGMT.MSC (Right click, Change Drive Letter and Paths, and remove the drive letter),

but here I want something a little bit different:

I would like to still have the disk mounted as E: (thus we can launch a program there, we can access it via cmd.exe, symlinks to E:\mydirectory\ will still work, etc.) but just not see it in the Computer Explorer view:

How to do this?

(I'm admin, and there is only 1 user account).

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Note: Using gpedit.msc doesn't work, no option to remove E: only appears in the list:

Answer

You can hide drives in Windows Explorer using a user-specific registry setting. Create a new registry entry using regedit in the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

called NoDrives, type DWORD, and set it to a decimal value of 16 (which stands for E:; see list below). If you want to hide multiple drives, you just add the values. For example, to hide both D and E, add 8+16 and enter 24 as decimal value in regedit.

You will probably need to log off your user and login again for the changes to become effective. And: the drive is just hidden – it still can be accessed.  By command line of course, but also using Explorer if someone manually types in E:\ and Enter in the address bar.

A   1
B   2
C   4
D   8
E   16
F   32
G   64
H   128
I   256
J   512
K   1024
L   2048
M   4096
N   8192
O   16384
P   32768
Q   65536
R   131072
S   262144
T   524288
U   1048576
V   2097152
W   4194304
X   8388608
Y   16777216
Z   33554432