Windows 7, Deleting Large files is extremely slow. (Not going to recycle bin, permanent delete)

Anonymous
2009-12-13T14:37:28+00:00

It is taking a huge amount of time to delete files.

The files are not going to recycle bin (I am hold shift while hitting the Delete key)

Also I have even tried shutting off the recycle bin

I have timed a few of these

Single file delete, 2.6 gb, 2 minutes 14 seconds

Single file delete, 1.9 gb, 1 minutes 44 seconds

Single file delete, 230 mb, 0 minutes 24 seconds

Most of the time the dialog window that pops up says "Calculating..."

Judging by the times, This has something to do with file size.

I get similar time when I delete from the command prompt.

Windows XP would do permanent deletes and moves (on the same drive) in a split second, especially since we are talking about one file.

I work with large image files regularly. I can't wait 2 plus minutes every time I delete one of these files when I may have to move or delete a few hundred at a time.

I am getting very frustrated with Windows 7.

So far...

I have disabled Remote Differential Compression (RDC)

I have disabled TCP AutoTuning and Receive Side Scaling

                netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled (AND)

                netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled  (And rebooted)

There are no removable drives, USB devices, or other attached devices other that the keyboard and mouse.

I have disabled

Windows Search and Indexing

I am viewing "Details" only in windows explorer (No Thumbnails)

I have shut off IPv6 support (I read about it somewhere but I believe it was to do with network operations, but I tried it anyway)

Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface is disabled

All Drivers are up to date.

I have completely wiped the drive and reloaded the OS.

This is on a 1tb storage drive, no RAID, 3gb SATA drive (Seagate 7200.12)

Windows 7 64bit (Windows experience is listed as 6.1)

Intel i5 processor with 4gig memory

Fresh install, fast hard drive (OS).

Avast AV

Not much else running

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-01-13T06:14:31+00:00

    Okay slow delete operations indicate indexed resources and thus answers my question 'is there something else going on?' with a yes, there is the clean up of the indices going on here.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-12T22:18:54+00:00

    I don't understand why it should take so long when the most expensive thing you need to do is likely remove the pointer to the resource in the resource allocation table/file allocation table.  Is there more going on?  When I do an rm -rf somefolder/ on a ux system it and all of its sub folders seem to be removed fairly quickly.    It seems to be taking as long to permanently delete these files as it did to copy them . . . is there such a thing as permanent delete in Windows7? I imagine that this operation (permanent delete of a large file or large set of files and folders) should be one of the quickest operations in the play book, certainly significantly faster than the copy operation that put them there.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-01-07T13:43:17+00:00

    This doesn't answer the question. You need elaborate the first paragraph of point (A) instead of typing the well known How to boot a computer in Safe Mode. Get professional.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-08-23T13:36:22+00:00

    Just an FYI:  I have not had this issue in any of my Windows 8 machines.  I find Win8 is much better at handling resources as well.  I just put the start button back using the Classic Start from SourceForge and it runs better than Win7.

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-08-23T13:00:33+00:00

    I had this problem, too, and tried all the other proposed solutions.  My problem was a single log file from an overzealous developer....  It had grown to 7GB, and I could not delete it or even use the app generating it anymore.  Every attempt using shift-del or del in a CMD window just hung for minutes and minutes.

    My solution, as suggested by one of the prior posters, took 30s of set up and recovery, and 1s for the delete!

    1. Launch a CMD window.  I suggest you run it as Administrator.
    2. CTRL-ALT-DEL, Start Task Manager
    3. Go to  Processes, find explorer.exe and End Process
    4. from CMD window, delete your file - INSTANT!
    5. from the same CMD window, type "explorer" and hit enter

    (I'm on Win7 32 bit)

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