How to delete a network drive on Windows 10

Network drives are locations on the network that you can access directly from your own system. On Windows 10, network drives can be accessed from File Explorer. Go to This PC and look under Network locations.

Delete network drive on Windows 10

A network location can be a media server, it can be a folder on another system, a hard disk on the network, or a drive on another system. Adding it isn’t the easiest but deleting a network drive is easy.

Note: deleting a network drive will remove it from your system so that it no longer appears when you access This PC from File Explorer. The drive will NOT be deleted from the device it is on.

1. Disconnect from File Explorer

A mapped network drive can be deleted from File Explorer.

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Go to This PC.
3. Under Network Locations, right-click the drive you want to delete.
4. Select Disconnect from the context menu.

2. Delete from PowerShell or Command Prompt

You can delete a network drive from Command Prompt and from PowerShell. The command is the same.

1. Open Command Prompt or Open PowerShell.
2. Run the following command but replace Drive-Letter with the letter of the network drive.

Net Use Drive-Letter: /Delete

Example

Net Use Z: /Delete

Remove drive credentials

Deleting a network drive won’t delete the username and password saved to Windows 10 that allowed you to access it. To delete the credentials, follow these steps.

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Go to User Accounts>Credentials Manager.
3. Select Windows Credentials.
4. Expand the drive/location.
5. Click ‘Remove’ to delete the credentials.

Note: Under Windows Credentials, the drive may not appear with its designated letter name. It may appear with a name that is consistent with the name of the device that the drive exists on.

Conclusion

Deleting a network drive is easy, but doing so will obviously make any and all network paths that reference it will become obsolete. You will have to remove them. Any apps that rely on those network paths will have to be pointed to a different location. If there’s an app that relies on a network location to function, you should consider setting up an alternative location for the app to access before you delete the drive. Adding a location back is almost as easy as deleting it. If you haven’t removed the credentials, you may not need to enter them again. You can still access the drive by pasting its network path in the location bar in File Explorer or from Command Prompt.

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Fatima Wahab

Fatima has been writing for AddictiveTips for six years. She began as a junior writer and has been working as the Editor in Chief since 2014. Fatima gets an adrenaline rush from figuring out how technology works, and how to manipulate it. A well-designed app, something that solves a common everyday problem and looks

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