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You Receive an "Access Denied" Error Message When You Delete Folders from a Mounted Drive

Article ID: 319368 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q319368

SYMPTOMS

If you try to delete folders that are stored on a mounted drive and 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 problem occurs because the Recycle Bin does not recognize mounted volumes. For example, assume that the following drive layout is in use:

Drive C is a 1-gigabyte (1-GB) drive that uses the NTFS file system.
C:\Host-dir is the mount point for a separate 9-GB drive.

If 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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RESOLUTION

To work around this issue, use either of the following methods:

When you delete files or folders by using Windows Explorer, use the SHIFT+DELETE key combination. This bypasses the Recycle Bin.
Open a command prompt window and 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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