partitioninguser-accountswindows 7
I have a laptop which my brother wants to use sometimes.
I have a password on my user account and important school/work documents that I don't want him touching, and I don't want him installing any unsavory software. I've created a user so he has an account, but I don't want to give him any access to my hard drive.
Can I create a partition (say 30GB off the 750GB hard drive) and restrict his account to only use that partition, without impacting his ability to use the computer?
Folder Redirector can be used to relocate the special folders to a different path.
This utility can relocate the following shell folders:
Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, Send To, Shared Documents, Shared Music, Shared Pictures, Shared Video, Start Menu, Startup, Temporary Internet Files, Common Startup, Common Desktop.
Folder Redirector is freeware and portable (no installation required).
If you want move the entire user profile, here's a tutorial:
In Windows Vista and later you can apply policies only to a specific account, but you have to load the group policy object editor from the Microsoft Management Console, not by opening the snapin directly.
Click the "users" tab and select a user.
You will now have a group policy user object for the selected user. Apply whatever restrictions you want. You may be interested in checking out "Hide these specified drives in My Computer" in User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer.
Best Answer
Most operating systems support some form of disk quotas and all current systems (in common use) support permissions.
To use quotas, you can set them per-user on the disk or partition. In Windows, the settings can be accessed by right-clicking a disk in My Computer. This is not the best way, however.
Using permissions to restrict the user will likely be more useful. Provide a limited user account and remove read permissions for that user on any directories or files they need not access. They will need some permissions to the system directories, at least to read files, and should likely have full permissions for their partition. They should certainly have no permissions, (read, write, or execute) for your partition and home directory.