How to Recover a Deleted File from a Shared Drive?

Where do deleted files go from a shared drive?

Sometimes, accidental deletion is unavoidable if you’re browsing/managing computer files. The same goes for shared drives. After deletion, some of you might raise questions:

Shared, network or mapped drives don’t have temporary storage places because these shared files or folders are stored in their remote computers. In brief, if you accidentally a file from a shared drive, you’ll be prompted to check the Recycle Bin of its connected computer to get accidentally deleted files back.

Part 1. How to recover files from shared drives directly?

How to recover a recover deleted file from a shared drive? Please pay attention to the corresponding premises before selecting one of them.

1. Recover deleted files from network drives via Previous Versions

Though shared drives only can display shared files or folders, you can recover deleted files from network drives via Previous Versions, too. 

As the name reveals, this built-in feature can offer you several copies of files/folders as long as you’ve activated File History or System Protection of the disk containing your desired shared files. Let’s show how it works.

If the shared file has been deleted over seven days, you’d better contact consumer support.

Step 1. After locating your desired file, right-click on it and click the “Restore previous version” button.

Step 2. Under the Previous Versions tab, browse and choose a file/folder version according to its timeline and importance. Then click the “Open” button.

Step 3. Click “Copy” to get your needed shared file back to your network drive.

2. Recover shared files from the remote computer’s Recycle Bin

The remote computer is the lead/dominant computer in a shared network. At this point, you can open your remote computer’s Recycle Bin to recover deleted files as long as you haven’t emptied its Recycle Bin.

Step 1. Double-click this temporary place to open it.

Step 2. Browse all the deleted items or type filenames in the search bar to quickly locate your needed files. Then “Restore” them.

3. Recover shared files from the remote computer using data recovery software

As mentioned previously, the Recycle Bin of your remote computer saves your recently deleted files from shared drives. So can you recover deleted files from hard drives after emptying Recycle Bin?

In theory, everyone can restore files from backups created by Windows built-in features. But in practice, users haven’t attached enough importance to backups.

In the absence of any safeguards, there’s no better way than using reliable data recovery tools like MyRecover to recover deleted files from hard drives of your remote computer.   

★Powerful features & friendly design: 

Recover the deleted/lost Word documents, Excel, PPT, PDF, Photos, Videos, Audio, folders, compressed files, and 200+ types of data from HDD, USB, SD card, etc.

Retain the original format for the deleted/lost data.

During scanning, you can search your needed files by tying their filenames in the search bar or wait to find all the deleted and other lost files on your computers after Quick Scan and Deep Scan.  

Support NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, and ReFS file systems.

Let’s take MS Excel as an example. Download MyRecover on your Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, or Windows Server computers to recover your deleted Excel files!  

Step 1. Launch MyRecover on your PC, then hover the mouse over the partition that contains the Excel files you want to restore. Then click Scan.

Step 2. Search your desired Excel files or wait to see all the deleted and other missing files after performing Quick Scan and Deep Scan.

Step 3. Go to the Deleted Files/Other Missing Files folder, and choose your desired Excel files. Please click “Recover x files” and save them in a new location.

Bonus tips: Use free network drive backup software to restore files without losing data

Without a doubt, regular backups are the best hedge against data loss. Since restoration means getting data from prepared backups to the same storage device, there’re two steps for you. Let’s perform how to restore files via recommended network drive backup tool, AOMEI Backupper. 

Phase 1. Make a File Backup via AOMEI Backupper

Step 1. Download AOMEI Backupper on your Windows computer.

Step 2. After launching it, select the “File Backup” option under the Backup tab.

Step 3. Click “Add file/Add folder” as you need.

Step 4. Click Share/NAS > Network location and select the network files/folders you want to back up. Then click the “OK” button.

Step 5. Designate a saved path to store your selected files/folders and click the “Start Backup” button.

Phase 2. Restore deleted files from network drive via backups

Step 1. Click Backup > Select Task.

Step 2. Locate the backup you want to restore and click the “Next” button.

Step 3. Select the network files/folders you want to restore and click the “Next” button.

Step 4. You can “Restore to original location” or “Restore to a new location” according to your needs. Then click the “Start Restore” button.

Related suggestions

How to recover a deleted file from a shared drive? You can get several efficient methods after reading this passage. Similarly, you can also recover deleted shared files from your remote computer.

Moreover, there’re some relevant tips about shared/network/mapped drives.

• Several users are wondering how Google Drive recover deleted shared files because Google Drive is the most popular shared drive among users. If it happens to be your case, sign in to your Google Admin Console to ask for help.

• If the mapped drive keeps disappearing, please get more details on another page to address this problem.
• Accessible backups are essential to restoration. For Windows users, please consider adopting the above free backup software to create a partition/volume backup or disk backup as you need.