Can I remove the drive letter on the SD card I'm using for Readyboost?

Question

I'm using a 4GB SD Card in my Windows 7 laptop with Rreadyboost turned on for that particular card. In My computer the SD card shows its own drive letter. Since I'm only using the SD card for Readyboost and nothing else, I'd prefer for it not to be shown in My Computer. Can I remove the drive letter in Computer Management (so the SD Card won't show in My Computer), or will no drive letter disable the Readyboost feature?

Answer 1

Handy little tool called HideDrive does the trick. Tested and working on my own computer with Readyboost on a USB stick. You can still access the drive, even though it is hidden from Explorer which is exactly what I wanted to do too, just never got around to it. Word of warning, the tool restarts your computer when you hit apply.

If you are feeling adventurous, you could also edit the registry directly. Basically, navigate to Computer\HKEY__CURRENT__USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and edit NoDrives to a decimal value using the chart below. Simply add up the numbers for the drive letters you want to hide. So to hide drive I:, set it to 256.

Drive Letter    DECIMAL Value
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

Answer 2

In Windows 8.1 at least, ReadyBoost does not need a drive letter. You can remove the letter in Disk Management and it will still work, even after reboot (kernel is holding a lock on the file ReadyBoost.sfcache, the usual entries appear in the event log and the light flashes when opening programs, as expected)

Answer 3

Honestly, and I know this isn't an answer, but why not just invest in more RAM? SD is traditionally slow with writes, and readyboost writes to it a lot, so you may be going even slower than if you didn't have it at all and the OS paged normally.

Answer 4

Just to add to Kez's answer above, here's a link to the full instructions for Windows 7 which does not include this registry key by default (shows you how to create it properly with screen shots if you are having trouble finding it): Hide and Remove Logical Drives in Computer and Windows Explorer (NoDrives)