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Mass deleting files in windows

There's got to be a better way.

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I'm using Windows 7, but advice that spans other Windows editions would be more beneficial to the masses.

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73% accept rate
p.s. it wasn't my SVN... I didn't make that mess! – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 15:29
definite duplicate I'd say.. – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 16:47
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wiping out the disk and reinstalling win7 would take less time :p – Bahbar Nov 24 '09 at 21:51
@Bahbar - +1 cos it's true! – Josh Comley Nov 25 '09 at 13:58
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closed as exact duplicate by random♦ Jul 2 '10 at 20:43

This question covers exactly the same ground as earlier questions on this topic; its answers may be merged with another identical question. See the FAQ.

8 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

Do it from the command prompt

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Trying this now... – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 15:58
Sigh, no feedback after over half an hour! – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 16:37
(feedback from command-prompt, that is - not you!) – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 16:37
What command are you using at the command prompt? del or rd? I don't know what the actual speed difference might be, but my first inclination would be rd. – JMD Nov 24 '09 at 16:50
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up vote 3 down vote

Mass Directory Eraser - quickly delete thousands of files.

If you have ever deleted a large folder structure with thousands of files, you probably noticed that it can take quite some time for Windows to complete this procedure. Mass Directory Eraser can do the same in about 2 seconds.

Mass Directory Eraser is freeware.

p.s.: to make the it portable, rip the installer with Universal Extractor. works with Windows 7.

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I canceled the delete out of intrigue and tried MDE - currently been 3 mins and not responding... I'll give it a little while! – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 15:50
Gave up after about 10 mins of no response or feedback and just "Not responding" :( – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 15:55
i just ran a test in win 7 with a 'smaller folder' (2000+ files) and it took a while indeed (not responding), then i repeated the test and this time it took only 1 second. maybe it was just the initial run. – Molly7244 Nov 24 '09 at 16:05
just copied the entire window 7 folder with appr. 25.000 files, MDE took about 5 sec to delete it (during this period it showed 'not responding'). – Molly7244 Nov 24 '09 at 16:21
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up vote 1 down vote

Command Prompt: rd /s targetdir

That's got to be faster than 8 hours. Add /q for "quiet mode".

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up vote 1 down vote

Try Directory Eraser .

From Author,

"I tried to delete 18560 files and 7900 folders with Explorer in Windows and this takes 30-45 minutes and delete all with my program take this ONLY "2" SECONDS"

from review's -> you might get DEP warning in your windows machine

Please Note: I haven't tried it yet

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what this tool does (after reading a lot about the topic) is: move the folder to be deleted to somewhere else (which takes almost .. no time if its on the same drive), return to the user (give her the feeling of beeing done) and then delete all the files in the background. – akira Nov 26 '09 at 12:44
thats interesting find @akira, thanks for posting it. – TuxGeek Nov 26 '09 at 14:26
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seems to be pretty much the same program i had posted :) – Molly7244 Nov 27 '09 at 10:49
haa... i admit ... same program only ;) – TuxGeek Nov 30 '09 at 9:05
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up vote 1 down vote accepted

Nothing I tried works, looks like there is no quick way!

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up vote 0 down vote

If this is only a once-in-a-while thing, I would say to just deal with it - in the nicest of ways of course! The amount of scale you're dealing with here is uncommon and not something that Microsoft has really tried to reach out to.

Another example of extreme scale: Our CEO has a MASSIVE Outlook Inbox, and he likes to try out different search / indexing clients. At one point he had Google Desktop, Xcite (or something -- I forget), and another outside indexing tool all pointed at Outlook. Not only did this demonstrate how inefficient and unscalable Outlook was, it took him minutes -- literally -- just to load Outlook.

Our solution was migrating his PST files to an SSD. Now his Outlook 'feels' more like a regular Outlook. At least for now :)

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Good point about the scale, but I dislike how Windows has to calculate the files first, even with shift-del. I'd like to just mark a dir as deleted in the file system, I don't care about wiping the file "properly"! I'm sure it could be quicker than it is. – Josh Comley Nov 24 '09 at 16:09
Agreed. Command line would be your friend in that case, as JMD has already suggested. You could also load up a Ubuntu LiveCD or something and try deleting from that :) If still in Windows, definitely make sure you have as few processes running as possible. Anything that accesses the hard drive will slow you down. – Josh Nov 24 '09 at 16:21
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up vote 0 down vote

'fastcopy' claims to delete files very fast.

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up vote 0 down vote

it takes roughly 30s to delete 40k files with this snippet:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ca0at0xh(VS.85).aspx

it uses the 'DeleteFolder' method of the 'Scripting.FileSystemObject'. worth a try?

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That would still work out at 47.5 mins for 3,000,000 files – Josh Comley Nov 25 '09 at 13:57
read my comment about "directory eraser". i dont think you will find another solution thats "faster" than deleting every single file (which is what most of the tools proposed do: rmdir, "my" script, mass directory eraser etc.) so i think 50minutes for 3m files is just ok. – akira Nov 26 '09 at 12:46
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