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I have a large source code folder which consists of 82,480 Files, 19,633 Folders. It is added to Library for fast access. When I delete it from library, it takes forever to prepare deleting and calculating, near 1 hour or so. Then I did research and found that when delete from its absolute path, like go to d:\work\bigfolder and right click and delete, it only takes seconds to prepare.

Do you know what Windows 7 Library is doing when prepare deleting?

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It's probably related to Search Indexer... – HaydnWVN Dec 8 '11 at 15:17
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another reason not to use windows libraries. – Moab Dec 9 '11 at 1:45
It makes me wonder though, how often are you deleting it in the first place and if you are, why? – surfasb Dec 9 '11 at 12:59
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Nope, I don't.

But if you're curious, you can use Process Monitor to find out.

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up vote 1 down vote

It's (most likely) searching all the folders attached to the Library for the file(s) you selected to create full file paths for the deletion.

This is a required additional step, in comparison to deleting files from a specific path/folder, as files in a Library are not necessarily coming from the same folder.

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I think your answer makes sense. Although one folder under Library should belong to a physical folder, it may still need to calculate each file's absolute path. The fact I find makes me avoid using Library in future. – Sheen Dec 8 '11 at 21:50
@Sheen Well if you like any of the answers, you can always vote them up, and/or accept them. Unfortunately you're really asking for an answer to an 'unfixable' problem. – techie007 Dec 8 '11 at 22:45
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up vote 1 down vote

I just tried deleting a folder on my computer, and the Process Monitor output showed that it was enumerating every file and folder contained. In your case, this would mean it has to read the information on ~102k files to delete them. In my case, there were ~40k files, and it took about a minute on an SSD. This time would be much higher on a traditional hard drive.

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