I have sniffed around this solution for quite some time, but just last week came up against an immovable need and finally got serious about making it work. Specifically, I was looking to copy some files from an old server to my local disk for “safe keeping” (until I figure out what to do with the junk utilities I’d amassed), and simple file copy was failing (annoyingly, as it does, For Shame! Windows, that in 202x we STILL just get a failure instead of “continue & log for remediation” report!). For the first time in my career, I didn’t have another server to move “it” to, so…
This is where I found this information: https://itworldjd.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/how-to-access-the-disks-mapped-through-rdp/
Thank you, Jacques Dalbera!
Not quite a reproduction of Jacques’ post, but here ’tis.
Since Windows XP, support for drive mapping to the client during a Microsoft Terminal Services Connection (aka Remote Desktop) session, allowing file copy from the server to the client and vice versa via the file system.
To my knowledge, this is supported only in the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (aka MSTSC, RDP) application, and is not supported in the Microsoft Universal Remote Desktop App. I hope to find I’m wrong one day and correct this post, but meantime…
In the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (MSTSC) interface, “Local Resources” tab, “Local devices and resources” section, hit “more” to see options for “Drives”. Each volume (removable, fixed, or network) available on the client workstation is enumerated, and can be selected to be connected to the server during the RDP session. Each will show in the server’s Windows Explorer as “volume on computer name”, (e.g. “C on Computer1” for C: drive, or “F on Computer1” for F: drive). This makes for reasonably useful GUI browsing and file manipulation, but what about command prompt access?
I’m so glad you asked.
Drives can also be addressed much like network shares via Universal Naming Convention (UNC), and/or mapped in a similar fashion if that suites the purpose. Volumes on the client are accessible to the server as \\TSCLIENT (note the client workstation’s machine name is not used, but is always referenced with the generic name “TSCLIENT”) followed by the volume’s drive letter, so using the same example as before “C on Computer1” could be connected through \\TSCLIENT\C or “F on Computer1” could be connected through \\TSCLIENT\F. We can display the content of C: drive on Computer 1 via UNC:
DIR \\TSCLIENT\C
and/or map a drive letter to it:
NET USE Y: \\TSCLIENT\C
We can also perform other command prompt actions, like copying files:
COPY \\TSCLIENT\C\USERS\ME\DESKTOP\*.XLS D:\DATA\EXCEL
or what I needed, Robocopying files:
ROBOCOPY \\TSCLIENT\C\ME\DESKTOP D:\DATA\EXCEL *.XLS /Z /ETA
ROBOCOPY Y:\ME\DESKTOP D:\DATA\EXCEL *.XLS /Z /ETA
Note from Jacques’ post, as I have not investigated this: the remote Terminal Services session inherits the user’s permission. So if you are logged on to the workstation as user A and you log in to the Terminal Services server as user B, the session will have access to the drives according to A’s permissions.
I hope this helps future me, and, with a little bit of luck, others out there seeking.
PS here’s another article I found while researching this, complete with some pictures. Thank you, Brandon Lee, even if your commenters feel that you did not write about what the title states. The pictures & process still helped me.
sypak 