How to Hide Drives using Group Policy in Windows Server 2012 R2

1. In the below screen shot, you can see drives A; (Floppy Disk), C: & E: (Hard Drives), D: (DVD Drive) is visible. In this practical, we’ll show you step by step guide to hide C: drive of this server.

2. We are assuming a scenario in which, we are hiding C: drive for all the users that are part of the Sales OU. To achieve the desired results, we have created an OU (how to create OU in Active Directory) and created Users in the OU (how to create users).

3. To create a GPO, open Group Policy Management console by either typing “gpmc.msc” in the run or click on start, click on down arrow and select Group Policy Management console option. Expand domain name i.e.itingredients.com in this case. Right click on OU Sales and select “Create a GPO in this domain, and Link it here”.

4. Type the name of the new blank GPO template. For this practical we’ll give the name as HideDrive.

5. Once the blank GPO template is created. Right click on the HideDrive GPO and click on Edit to define the settings to hide drives using Group Policy.

6. Group Policy management editor window would be opened. As this is User policy therefore on the left hand side frame, expand “User Configuration”, expand Policies, Administrative Templates Policy, Windows Components and select File Explorer. In the right hand side frame, double click on the “Hide these specified drives in My Computer”.

7. In the “Hide these specified drives in My Computer” window. Select Enabled to hide the drives using Group Policy. Under Options select the drive that you want to hide. For this practical, we’ll select C drive only. Click on Apply and then click on Ok.

8. Once the policy is defined and enabled, ensure you check it and confirm that it shows “Enabled” in the state.

9. Go to any of the client computers and run the command “gpupdate /force” to force the group policy. Else you can logoff and login the user back to the computer, it would also refresh the Group Policy.

10. Now open “My PC” (My Computer) to check if C: drive is policy applied successfully or not. If C: drive is hidden then it confirms that our Group Policy is applied successfully. This policy would work for all the users that we created in Sales OU because we deployed this Group policy to Sales OU.

Please don’t forget to share your experience if you are using similar kind of policies in your Organization or if you are facing any issues while deploying these kind of policies.