How To Prevent Other Users From Accessing Drives In Windows 10/11

All recent versions of the Windows operating system, including Windows 10 and Windows 11, allow users to create multiple user accounts.

If you have created more than one user account on your Windows 10 or 11 computer, you will be surprised to know that other users can access your files on drives. For instance, if you have photos and videos on one of the drives (other than in the user profile folder), other users on your PC can access them.

If you have created a guest account or another account on your Windows 10/11 PC, you might want to prevent other users from accessing drives to protect your privacy.

Luckily, Windows 10 and 11 let you prevent access to specific drives for other user accounts without additional software. You just need to change drive permissions to prevent users from accessing your drives.

This guide shows you how to configure the Windows File Explorer settings to stop other users from accessing specific drives.

Stop other users from accessing drives in Windows 10/11

Step 1: Open This PC in File Explorer.

Step 2: Right-click on the drive that you want to prevent other users from accessing, and then click the Properties option to open the Properties dialog.

Step 3: In the Properties dialog, click the Security tab to switch to the same.

Step 4: Here, under the Group or user names section, click the Edit button.

Step 5: In the resulting dialog, click the Add button, type the name of the user account for which you want to stop the access, click the Check names button to ensure that the entered account name is correct, and then click the OK button.

Step 6: Now, in the Permissions for account section, select all options in the Deny column to stop all types of access to the specific user account.

Finally, click the Apply button. When asked for confirmation, click the Yes button. A dialog box with a progress bar might appear on the screen for a few seconds.

NOTE: To allow access again, select all options in the Allow column and then click Apply.

Step 7: That’s it! From now on, the restricted drives will appear in File Explorer This PC, but the drive throws an “Access is denied” message whenever the user tries to access it.

Please note that you need to repeat these steps for drives that you want to prevent other users from accessing them.