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How do I remove mounted drives from the unity launcher?

I love Linux because I get to learn things about my PC. One thing that keeps nagging me is this. I have two partitions for file storage, besides the root partition. Ubuntu mounts any partition I open and shows it in desktop. I don't see Windows mounting my partitions when I open one, but that may be just under the hood. It might be a simple thing but I want to know. Sorry if I'm sounding stupid.

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  • Do you want to stop it from mounting (no access), or just stop it from putting an icon on the desktop? You can do either one.
    – Marty Fried
    Jun 24, 2012 at 6:21
  • @MartyFried I just want to stop it from putting an icon on the desktop. Will be helpful if you explain why in Linux partitions are mounted. Is it same for Windows too?
    – BRKsays
    Jun 24, 2012 at 6:24
  • @TomBrossman Sorry that I didn't searched thoroughly. I will edit my question.
    – BRKsays
    Jun 24, 2012 at 6:37
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    There is a utility called "configuration editor" (gconf) where you can set options like that in a tree-based configuration. The setting is under /apps/nautilus/desktop and has a checkbox for "volumes_visible", among others.
    – Marty Fried
    Jun 24, 2012 at 6:37
  • What do you want to know?
    – Mitch
    Jun 24, 2012 at 6:39

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I am going to add the answer as it is in Official wiki

Data on a computer, as you may know, is stored in binary as a series of 1s and 0s. The way these are stored on a device and their structure is called the "filesystem". In Linux devices are referenced in /dev. Data is not actually stored on a device so you cannot access this data by going into /dev, this is because it is stored inside the filesystem on the device so you need to access these filesystems somehow. Accessing such filesystems is called "mounting" them, and in Linux (like any UNIX system) you can mount filesystems into any directory, that is, make the files stored in that filesystem accessible when you go into a certain directory. These directories are called the "mount points" of a filesystem. In other systems this is done differently. For example in Windows there is no distinction made between a device and the filesystem on it, and the user is restricted to mounting a device's filesystem in a top-level volume which is automatically assigned a letter such as C:, D:, etc. and the files inside these filesystems are accessed inside each volume's root such as "C:\", "D:\", "E:\", etc. (remember, Windows uses back slashes instead of the more common forward slashes you find in Linux)

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    That's a pretty good explanation, especially the part about how Widows accesses drives vs filesystems. It made me realize the main difference in Windows, with its separate drives that are added together in a pool, and Linux/Unix with its directory tree with a common root where filesystems are sort of grafted on.
    – Marty Fried
    Jun 24, 2012 at 16:43
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I would suggest using Ubuntu Tweak. It has settings for what is and what is not shown on the desktop plus lots of other great tweaks. You can find it at ubuntu-tweak.com or just search for it on Google.

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