I recently had to set-up some shares on a server box using File Explorer and the share menu option, but after a reboot they all disappeared.

Note: I’m not concerned by this behaviour, of losing the shares, as it’s probably down to some security policy but every now and then it’s so much easier having the shares available to work from when I need to deploy apps etc.

Anyway, using net share in a batch file saves the day.

Just run

net share

to view the current shares on your machine.

Now to create a share, simply use

net share DEPLOYMENT=d:\mydeployment /GRANT:EVERYONE, READ

In this case I’m actually creating a READ only share with access granted to everyone. The string to the left of the = operator is the sharename (i.e. what you’ll see or use to access the share) obviously the right hand side is the location on the machine the share points to.

Obviously EVERYONE might by less than great in terms of security, so instead you can GRANT individual user’s access. The permission can be READ | CHANGE | FULL, see the output of net share /?

The syntax of this command is:

NET SHARE
sharename
          sharename=drive:path [/GRANT:user,[READ | CHANGE | FULL]]
                               [/USERS:number | /UNLIMITED]
                               [/REMARK:"text"]
                               [/CACHE:Manual | Documents| Programs | BranchCache | None]
          sharename [/USERS:number | /UNLIMITED]
                    [/REMARK:"text"]
                    [/CACHE:Manual | Documents | Programs | BranchCache | None]
          {sharename | devicename | drive:path} /DELETE
          sharename \\computername /DELETE