Troubleshoot: Mapped Drive Keeps Disappearing!

What is meant by mapping a drive?

Drive mapping is how Microsoft Windows associates a local drive letter (from A to Z) with a shared storage area shared with another computer (often referred to as a File Server) over the network. In brief, a mapped drive seems like a shortcut to a drive that is on another PC.

With a mapped drive, you’re permitted to read and modify files from the shared storage area as if it were a local physical hard disc drive.

Why does my mapped drive keeps disappearing?

Mapped drives are playing an increasing role in our careers because mapped drives are ideal for ample file storage, backup, and sharing. What’s more, mapped drives are much faster than browsing the network.

It’s tough for non-tech users to fix mapped drives disappear Windows 10 by themselves. If you’re bothered by this issue, please get an overview of possible reasons and feasible solutions below.

• Accidentally unmapped
• Misidentified by your Windows PC
• Remapped or deleted
• Can’t show files or folders in the mapped drive

How to fix mapped drive keeps disappearing?

According to the above possible reasons, there’re two primary directions for you.   

If the mapped drive keeps disconnecting, open your Registry Editor to change your network card settings.

If there’s something wrong with your mapped network drive, open File Explorer to check Hidden items.

Fix 1. Show hidden mapped network drives via File Explorer

Besides Windows 10, sometimes Windows 11 mapped drive doesn’t show up shared files or folders saved on the NAS drives (mapped network drives and network drives) because they’re hidden. Let’s perform how to show hidden items using File Explorer. 

Step 1. Press “Win + E” to open Windows File Explorer.

Step 2. Click This PC > View > Show > Hidden items.

Fix 2. Disable User Account Control to show mapped drives

In some cases, activating User Account Control (UAC) could make mapped drives disappear Windows 10. Please refer to the following steps to turn off UAC.

Step 1. Type “change user account settings” in the search bar and hit “Enter” to open it.

Step 2. In the User Account Control window, drag the slider to the bottom “Never notify” and click the “OK” button.

Fix 3. Remap the drive via Registry Editor

Please ensure you’ll utilize the same IP address and the original hostname before remapping the drive using Registry Editor. Let’s show how it works.

Some of you might raise questions like how do I make a mapped drive persistent? To solve it, you can also create a new DWORD named ProviderFlags with a value of 1. To keep mapped network drives persistent, you can configure a Group Policy to prevent these drives from reconnecting until the network interface is fully enabled.

Step 1. Press “Win + R” to open the Run box and type “Regedit” in the Run box. Then hit “Enter” or press “OK” to open the Registry Editor.

Step 2. Go to the following path and right-click on the registry subkey to create a new DWORD Value.

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Step 3. Rename a Value Name and set the Value data to 1. This modification will enable the “administrator in Admin Approval Mode” user type and all other UAC policies.

Step 4. Please remember to click “OK” to save these changes and exit the Registry Editor. Then you can restart your computer.

Fix 4. Configure Proxy and SMB to recognize network drives

If the mapped drive disappeared because the mapped drive keeps disconnecting, you could try the following fixes to make your Windows PC recognize the network drive.

▶Configure the Network Proxy Settings

Step 1. Press “Win + I” to open Windows Settings. Under the Network & internet section, click the “Proxy” button.

Step 2. Then you can add a script to manually configure the proxy.

▶Activate the SMB features

Step 1. Type “programs and features” in the search box and click “Turn off Windows features on or off” to open the Windows Features window.

Step 2. In the Windows Features window, tick the features with SMB. Then click the “OK” button.

Step 3. Reboot your PC to see if these changes have been applied or not.

Bonus tips: How to recover files from hard drives with ease?

During the work, if you deleted files from mapped drives, can you recover deleted files from hard drives?

Mapped drives also are hard drives (even if located on a virtual/cloud computing system or network drives), but in this scenario, the hard drive refers to local hard drives because all the shared files and folders are stored on another computer’s hard drive.

How to recover files from hard drives with no effort? Undeniably, there’s no better way than using professional data recovery software like MyRecover.

★Powerful features and friendly design :  

Recover the deleted/lost Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, photos, videos, audio, folders, and other 200+ types of data from HDD, USB, SD cards, and other storage devices.

Judge the recovered files according to their original paths, filenames, and format.

During Quick Scan and Deep Scan, enter filenames in the search box to find your desired files or wait to find all the deleted and other lost files on your computers.   

Support NTFS, exFAT, FST32, and ReFS file systems. 

Download MyRecover on your Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, or Windows Server computers to retrieve your deleted files from the local hard drive!

Step 1. Run MyRecover on your PC, and select the partition that contains the files you need. Then click the “Start Scan” button.

Step 2. Quickly locate your desired files by Name, Date, Type, Size, or Path. Likewise, you can also wait to view all the deleted and other missing files.

Step 3. Go to the Deleted Files/Other Missing Files folder, and click “Recover x files” to get your chosen files back. Please store these recovered files in another path.

Related suggestions

What is meant by mapping a drive? Why does my mapped drive keeps disappearing, and how do I fix it? Please get the corresponding answers after reading this passage.

Unwilling to suffer data loss again? It’s time for you to make backups using free backup software for Windows to back up your important files, folders, disks, partitions, or the system to an internal or external hard drive, USB drive, Network, or Cloud drive.