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

I've tried everything in this thread and the problem still exests (Windows 7 x64).  Specifically, I'm trying to cleanup an uninstall of the Chrome browser and I'm trying to delete  a directory within the INDEXEDDB directory.  The problem is that it has over 92,000,000 (YES, 92 MILLION) freaking files!

 

No, it's not a corrupt directory or a trashed drive.  Several tests including CHKDSK and everything is fine hardware wise.  The files are a "known operating feature" of the browser.

 

The problem is that the pre-processing takes forever, we're talking about millions of files here.

 

Gosh, I miss the old DELTREE command...

For the whole dir in File Attributes uncheck both "File is ready for archiving" and  "Allow this file to have contents indexed in addition to file."  Then try Del /S from the command prompt for that dir.  I had a 19 GB file the was stuck at "Calculating..." for over an hour.  So I rebooted and did the above then the del at the command prompt.  It still took a few mins to do but at least it wasn't hours.

hth

Thanks for the response but as was posted early on in the thread:

"... the calculation time depends on not only the file size but the file number of its folder."

I have over 92 million files in the directory and a total size of ONLY 3.6 kilobytes!

Again, there's nothing wrong with the drive, the MFT or anything else.  The directory and the files (.SST) are created by design by Chrome but is not removed when he browser is uninstalled.  There are just millions of 0 byte files which Windows 7, by design, insists on pre-processing prior to deletion.

If this is a one time thing, you could create an Ubuntu Linux CD/DVD, live boot with it, then you can go to your drive and delete those files/dirs using Linux.

Good call, I was way ahead of you and was going to use DSL to do a quick and dirty directory removal.  Then I thought, "that would be too damn easy and still doesn't address the real problem with Windows 7."

I ended up doing something slightly similar.  I booted into Window's Safe Mode/Command Prompt to see how long it would take doing a basic delete command.

After running for 7 hours (yes seven), the operation completed.  I restarted and all is well.  I plan on sending a note to the OS channel.

I've tried everything in this thread and the problem still exests (Windows 7 x64).  Specifically, I'm trying to cleanup an uninstall of the Chrome browser and I'm trying to delete  a directory within the INDEXEDDB directory.  The problem is that it has over 92,000,000 (YES, 92 MILLION) freaking files!

 

No, it's not a corrupt directory or a trashed drive.  Several tests including CHKDSK and everything is fine hardware wise.  The files are a "known operating feature" of the browser.

 

The problem is that the pre-processing takes forever, we're talking about millions of files here.

 

Gosh, I miss the old DELTREE command...

Well, the DELTREE command still exists, but its now RD or RMDIR.

To use it in W7 open up the Windows Explorer and go to the left pane, Shift_Right_Click on the directory above the tree you want to remove.  Select "Open a Command Window Here".

When the command window opens do "RMDIR /S <directory name>" - the /S deletes all files and subdirectories of <directory name>

It will then say "are you sure <Y/N>" type "y"

It will then say "The directory is not empty" - don't worry, it is now!

Repeat RMDIR <directory name>

Gone!

FYI in the command window if you want to see the tree structure of the directory you're in, type TREE and it shows all the directories in a nice tree so you can make sure you're in the right spot.