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"Access Denied" When You Delete Folders from a Mounted Drive

Symptoms

When you try to delete folders that are stored on a mounted drive and to send them to the Recycle Bin, you may receive the following error message:

Cannot delete Foldername: Access is denied. The source file may be in use.

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Cause

This behavior occurs because the Recycle Bin does not understand mounted volumes. For example, assume that the following drive layout is in use:

C: -- 1-gigabyte (GB) drive using the NTFS file system
C:\Host-dir -- The mount point for a separate 9-GB drive
When you try to delete a folder with the path C:\Host-dir\Mydir, Windows Explorer interprets the folder as being on drive C and tries unsuccessfully to place it in the Recycle Bin on drive C.

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Workaround

To work around this issue, use either of the following methods:
  • When you delete the files or folders by using Windows Explorer, use the SHIFT+DELETE key combination. This bypasses the Recycle Bin.
  • Open a command prompt window and then use the rd /s /q command to delete the files or folders.
Note Both of these methods permanently delete the data. You cannot recover the data unless you have a current backup.

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Status

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

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Keywords: kb, kbbillprodsweep, public, nt5prb, kbui, kbprb, kberrmsg

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Article Info
Article ID : 243514
Revision : 5
Created on : 8/19/2020
Published on : 8/20/2020
Exists online : False
Views : 152