How to Enable Recycle Bin on Mapped Network Drives

Mapping a drive is nothing but connecting a local drive with specially allocated shared directory or folder on another computer. Once the drive is mapped, you can get access to shared resources and you can treat it like it is situated locally on your system. It is possible to map more than one computer drives to the shared resource and take benefit of this networked space.

When any file is deleted which was stored on network or mapped network, that file will be deleted permanently. It won’t go to the local computer recycle bin and also it won’t go to the server’s recycle bin. To avoid such data loss scenarios in future you can enable recycle bin on mapped network drives. Follow the below given steps to enable recycle bin on mapped network drives.

• Map a network drive to the network share you want to use. Ensure that the drive is reconnected on login
• Then go to C: > Users > Username
• Right click on any folder of this location and click Properties > Location tab
• Click on Move and browse the root drive (Which is mapped in step 1) and then hit Select Folder
• Then click OK and when the dialog box appears hit Yes
• Just repeat these steps for every user on the PC

Note: To verify whether this process worked or not, right click on the recycle bin and go to properties, and check whether the network drive is listed in the recycle bin’s location column.

However, knowingly or unknowingly if you have deleted any file from mapped network drives then use Remo Software to regain those deleted files easily. You need to remove the drive from network and connect to other computer as an external hdd and then restore files moved from hdd i.e. network drive. Don’t take any chances with your data on network drive. Enable recycle bin now and secure your files.

Things to be taken care:

1. This only applies to files accessed through the mapped network drive, not by UNC paths. Let’s take an example: if you have mapped \\server\shareto E: and delete something from this E: drive, then it will go to the recycle bin. However, if you browse to \\server\share and erase a file, it will be removed permanently.
2. This procedure may not work well with laptops.