You can hide a partition by use of a 3rd party program/utility, such as
Partition Magic or a boot program such as System Commander.

When hidden, the operating system, under normal use, will not see the
partition or write to it. Therefore, YOU will not be able to use the
partition when booted up into Windows.

Many OEM's use this technique to hide a recovery partition from the end
user, as I also do - after I repair a system. That way the "average" end
user can not muck around where I don't want them to. When they bring me
their computer *yet again* because they screwed it up, I can access this
hidden partition with my tools and restore their system to what it was when
I delivered it to them.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

"Dixonian69" <Dixonian69@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E1AA466A-668F-45F9-8DEA-94CD0FE54EA0@microsoft.com...
> Richard You responded to a Post about hidden partition.
>
> Why is partition hidden? How is it set to be be hidden?
> Why is changing to logical drive only way to unhide?
>
> have sam problem with unassigned drive letter and only option is to delete
> parttiton!!
>
> OP was
>
> Subject: Slave Drive has no drive assignment after XP reinstall
> 7/24/2005
> 5:15 AM PST
>
> By: Monika In: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware
>
> Also, if the secondary drive is partitioned/formatted as a primary
> partition
> (and subsequently hidden) disk management will see the drive but the only
> option you have available is to delete the partition.
>
> You can use Partition Magic to change the drive into a logical partition
> and
> unhide it, which will make it always visible to the operating system. BTW,
> I
> do this on purpose to protect data that I don't want the O/S to ever
> touch.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
>