Hey everyone! I just installed a new SSD to my PC and I'm trying to keep my work and entertainment files completely separate. I noticed that after installing the OS on this new drive, both hard drives can see each other's partitions and have full access. How can I set it up so that the contents of one hard drive are not visible or accessible from the other?
Also, I find it a bit cumbersome to switch drives through BIOS. Is there a more user-friendly way to set the new hard drive as the Windows boot manager? Maybe I can use a USB drive for this function too so that the drives don't have any dependency on each other? Thanks in advance for any help!
2 Answers
To keep your hard drives from seeing each other's content, boot into one OS and use Disk Management to remove the drive letter from the other drive. Then, switch to the other drive and do the same. This will make the drives invisible to each other, but keep in mind that some applications may still access them directly, although that's pretty rare. For managing boot options, you can try using EasyBCD to customize the OS selection. If you’re comfortable with the command line, bcdedit is another powerful option for that.
Normally, when you install a new drive, they should be independent by default. You can check by going to Windows Disk Management. If you're looking to run Windows from the new drive, you'll need to install the OS on it and format the old drive afterward. Just changing the boot partition won’t do anything by itself, and you can’t just transfer Windows files between drives either; they need to be freshly installed.
Are you sure about that? I think OP might be looking to dual boot their drives.
I just want to make my drives completely inaccessible to each other. They keep showing each other’s partitions, and I need that to change!
Thanks for the tips! Removing the drive letter just hides it, right? I also want to prevent them from accessing each other's content altogether. I tried to remove the other drive's username in the security settings, but it didn’t work. I'm concerned about fully separating them. Is that even possible?