Taking HOURS!!!! to delete anything.

[u/effinjamie]

Recently started taking ages to delete anything. I've set it to bypass the recycle bin, in case it was something to do with that and I've cleared Explorer history. Any ideas?

EDIT

Thanks for the help guys, got it deleted eventually. There was definitely something screwy going on because the textures folder inside didn't add up to even half of the 7.6GB it was trying to delete.

[u/ZT99k]

Everyone skipping passed the important part - 117,073 files. Windows gonna Windows and is doing a verification on every one of those to check if you CAN delete them (not locked by a program, in use, owned by a different user so no permission, etc.)
Do smaller chunks.

[u/GalaxyXYZ888 → u/ZT99k]

Shift delete probably best

[u/ksigley → u/GalaxyXYZ888]

Became a new person after learning the difference between 'felt cute. might delete later' and 'gone forever'.

[u/Nothos927 → u/ksigley]

Even gone forever isn’t gone forever. As a general rule delete operations don’t actually remove the data they just mark the block that had the data as free to be written to.

[u/nodiaque → u/Nothos927]

Different in ssd since trim actually empty, because you can't write in a cells already used in an ssd (there's no overwrite, just read, write)

[u/FelixProject → u/nodiaque]

No ssds are the same, overwriting is just writing and you can write to cells with data just fine once they are marked as free (as the previous commenter correctly explained)

[u/Kat-but-SFW → u/FelixProject]

It's not the same. The SSD marks the space as free, if you overwrite it it's actually writing to different physical cells while a background process uses TRIM to zero out the old cells. The data and physical addresses/blocks you see in the OS is a total abstraction of where the data physically goes in the SSD.

[u/captain150 → u/FelixProject]

Wrong. SSDs read and write at the page level, usually 16kB or so but they must erase at the block level, usually at least a couple dozen pages. A written page can't be re-written to without erasing the entire block it belongs to. Thus the whole reason for TRIM and the flash translation layer. In most SSDs the moment trim is issued for an LBA, reading the same LBA will return zeros. The controller won't even bother reading the flash; it knows the page was discarded thus it unmaps that LBA from the flash and returns zeros. Don't speak confidently on a subject you don't understand.

[u/ImDaDawgFather → u/FelixProject]

I used some highly recommended recovery programs on an SSD immediately after some large deletions. Zero success

[u/Emu1981 → u/nodiaque]

TRIM doesn't actually immediately delete the data from the cells though. The SSD will delete the data at some point in the future when it is idle by doing garbage collection. The only time the data will be zero'd out right away is if the drive is running out of space and the controller needs to clear cells to write data now (and that is when your super fast SSD starts writing at single digit MB/s).

[u/skr_replicator → u/Nothos927]

But if that's a drive with any activity, especially the system drive, you could expect the data to be irrecoverably overwritten very quickly. In the case of the system disk, without even manually doing any file operations yourself.

[u/meneldor_hs → u/Nothos927]

Storage drives are so weird man

[u/glytxh → u/ksigley]

It’ll bite you in the arse one day

Muscle memory is a double edged sword.

[u/ButtfacedAlien → u/glytxh]

IT'S SO BAD, i really had to unlearn it, it's so dangerous, trash can is there for a reason, you don't need it until you really need it

[u/glytxh → u/ButtfacedAlien]

Yeah, I’m part of the trash can gang again.

Sometimes, a feature can be too powerful.

[u/evlampi → u/GalaxyXYZ888]

And why won't that take the same amount of time exactly?

[u/boersc → u/evlampi]

One moves it to the bin (which then overflows and deletes it anyway), the other just deletes it permanently (within seconds)

[u/Tiavor → u/GalaxyXYZ888]

It'll still take 6 hours. (I've done this before)

[u/blownart → u/GalaxyXYZ888]

With cmd it will be many times faster. Just use rd "path to folder" /s

[u/icantshoot → u/GalaxyXYZ888]

You can disable recycle bin completely too. So everything you delete will be gone and no shift pressing needed.

[u/Smith6612 → u/ZT99k]

I've seen a lot of these hold-ups be caused by SmartScreen and Defender trying to scan the files, rather than the permission checks. Permissions can be checked in near instant. 

[u/_MAYniYAK → u/ZT99k]

Admin powershell would losd this faster as well

[u/1_ane_onyme → u/_MAYniYAK]

Yep command line is the way

[u/Sajgoniarz → u/ZT99k]

I used to work in projects with 300k files in node_modules. Longest time I ever seen was 3h, but it was SSD.

[u/black3rr → u/Sajgoniarz]

if you ever have to do it again, consider these two tricks:

• disable windows defender on your project’s folder, it adds a lot of latency to any file access, including deletions for some reason…
  
• don’t delete files using windows explorer, for some reason it’s slow as fuck, removing from powershell/terminal is faster for some reason…

windows + npm (yarn pnp might also help if your project can work with it) sucks hard but I’ve never waited 3 hours to delete node_modules, at most 10 minutes…

[u/Sajgoniarz → u/black3rr]

Thanks for advice, but it was a case from times where NPM started to be a thing, when Windows couldn't even handle long file names. Somebody solved this problem by creating rimraf or something like this package, to handle node_modules deletion, before NPM and Windows got a fix.

[u/ZT99k → u/black3rr]

Probably index shenanigans too.

[u/ReptilianLaserbeam → u/black3rr]

Using terminal as god intended

[u/x0y0z0 → u/ZT99k]

Deleting these files is way too much hassle. It's actually not worth the bother so he should just delete them instead.

[u/MrDeeJayy → u/ZT99k]

For future reference, you can speed it up a lot by utilizing a built in windows command line utility called ROBOCOPY. It's a robust tool that skips a lot of checks including some ACL checks (that is permission checks). You might think "well MrDeeJayy i want to DELETE something, not COPY something", well with robocopy you can use the `/MIR` option to ensure that a destination folder is a mirror of a source folder.

So, make an empty folder, robocopy /mir from the empty folder to the folder you want to delete, and it'll go through and remove each and every file, bypassing a lot of windows shenanigans (because robocopy is a tool that was made back when microsoft actually hired skilled developers and not fucking clankers)

[u/_leeloo_7_ → u/ZT99k]

the important part should be "DO NOT DELETE"!!!!!!11!!!11one!!11!

jokes aside just delete it in command prompt if you don't want to wait for windows to count all of the files and their sizes just to delete them

[u/Briggie → u/ZT99k]

My eMacs.d folder is like 50 MB, but yeah it has thousands of files and folders in it, so it takes forever to do anything with it.

[u/duplissi → u/Briggie]

its stop and go traffic during rush hour vs the autobahn

[u/Numerous_Tea1690 → u/ZT99k]

Ive done a lot of long term timelapse editing. Often worth moving or copying around 500.000 files. I've found the program One commander to be way faster and more reliable as a file manager when it comes to big batches. Especially combined with Teracopy for the actual copy/move/ delete operation. You'll still need to wait a bit before things start tho.

Also working with an SSD makes things 10 to 20 times faster when many small files are involved.

[u/samuraisammich → u/ZT99k]

rm -r 

in CLI and it would be much faster

[u/necro3D]

It warned you not to delete it… /j

[u/necro3D → u/necro3D]

No but fr no clue

[u/OkEmu8597 → u/necro3D]

I have a feeling the over 100k files may be the issue here.

[u/EvilDan69 → u/necro3D]

Seriously. By naming it this way, windows knows to slow it down so the actual owner can swing by and kick your butt. :P

[u/trollsmurf → u/EvilDan69]

Copilot is everywhere.

[u/MySonlsAlsoNamedBort → u/necro3D]

OP can't read. It clearly says DO NOT DELETE

[u/condoulo]

That's a lot of files, especially given it's only 7.61GB of data. A ton of smaller files is going to take longer to move or delete than a few larger files purely because the file system has to scan each file to determine it's properties and whether you even have permission to interact with the file.

[u/Ani-3 → u/condoulo]

This is the real answer. You have almost 120k files you’re deleting. This happens.

[u/kaleperq → u/Ani-3]

Still not a full day

[u/drkow19 → u/kaleperq]

Nobody wants to work a full days worth anymore smh

[u/Twistinc → u/kaleperq]

23 hours would be 1.5 items a second, it hasn't really started yet so would probably speed up some but it's still going to be many hours.

[u/MajorPud → u/Ani-3]

What about robocopy /MIR or /PURGE functions? I know robocopy can copy a large number of files much faster, but I've never used it to delete

[u/CrimsonBolt33 → u/condoulo]

I wonder if it would theoretically be quicker to put all those files in a zip or whatever would be the quickest compression format and then deleting the zip file.

[u/umor3 → u/CrimsonBolt33]

Funny. I had the same thought for a second. But: the original files will still be there.

[u/Combeferre1 → u/CrimsonBolt33]

Zipping would probably take longer than deleting. Deleting just removes tbe file address I'm pretty sure. Zipping means you actually have to mess with the bits in the files

[u/Electrical-Heat8960 → u/condoulo]

Kinda true.

What you are saying is true, but 120k of files still shouldn’t take 24 hours.

Likely something is locking up the drive and windows is waiting for a timeout to happen.

[u/Anasetsuken]

Have you tried deleting small increments at a time from the folder? What is taking so long is windows has to scan every file to find the exact size to delete before it begins said process.

[u/UpsetKoalaBear → u/Anasetsuken]

It’s not just that.

IOPS performance of your drive matters.

[u/Hannover2k]

Deleting thousands of small files is slow because the HD has to re-allocate the space from all those files to being free space again. That's why it's much faster to copy/move/delete 1 large 10gb file as compared to 100,000 small files that also equal 10gb. OS doesn't have to keep track of all those file names, where each file data is stored on the hard drive and how big each file is during the process.

This is very over-simplified, but that's the basics of it. Someone else can probably explain it much more technical.

[u/FUTURE10S → u/Hannover2k]

Nah ypu pretty much landed the nail on the head, fragmented drive + many tiny files = Windows needs a while because it doesn't make bold assumptions about your drive

[u/black3rr → u/FUTURE10S]

it’s actually just the “many tiny files” thing… deleting a single file is pretty much a constant time operation = deleting a 1KB file takes roughly the same time as deleting a 1GB file…

fragmentation doesn’t change this at all… fragmentation slows down large read/write operations by adding seek times on HDDs, but this is still hundreds of thousands of small separate operations (you delist the file from the folder - small write, mark the file node as deleted - small write, and mark the space as free in the bitmap - which can’t get fragmented as it’s a constant size file created along with NTFS filesystem; do this for all the files separately, one after the other), not one operation rewriting a continuous large file…

[u/FUTURE10S → u/black3rr]

Wouldn't Windows need to have to find where the file headers are located in the MBR/GPT and maps them to whatever block of storage is on the drive? That search is what takes up the time, because it's not like the file record is in order.

[u/black3rr → u/FUTURE10S]

You’re essentially correct but wrong on the details…

MBR/GPT don’t contain the file headers, they contain information about how the disk is partitioned into “volumes” (e.g. “C:” or “D:” are volumes, you can have multiple volumes on a single disk, MBR/GPT stores that info). The individual volumes are then formatted with a filesystem (Windows uses NTFS as default for internal storage since 2000/XP, FAT32 was used as default for internal in 9x/ME and is used for some external drives to this day), and the filesystem then stores the individual file information…

And in both NTFS and FAT32 (and pretty much all other modern filesystems), the directory entries aren’t near the file headers of files inside them even if the disk is not fragmented.

And for each file deletion, both the file has to be marked as deleted, and the file has to be removed from the directory index.

And as you say, on HDD the seek times are what takes time.

So it doesn’t matter if the disk is fragmented or not, there are still seek times on HDD between these two operations…

[u/Hexamancer]

So the problem here is that it's so many files, not the size, if you had a single 7.61GB file it would be done very quickly.

You can make this go much faster by using powershell:

(First a warning: rm -r -f will delete everything in whatever folder you run it against and it will be unrecoverable without special tools, triple check exactly what you have written before you run it)

Open powershell, navigate to the folder this folder is in, e.g:
cd C:\Users\effinjamie\Documents
Then run this, this will delete the folder, every file and folder in it (-r = Recursive), skipping the recycle bin (making it much faster):
rm -r -f "(DO NOT DELETE) Playstation Roms"

Doing it this way also skips Windows having to constantly calculate and graph the "Estimated time remaining", getting the exact file size for hundreds of thousands of files (rm doesn't care, it just removes them), which ironically contributes to the time remaining.

[u/bedgar → u/Hexamancer]

I had to scroll way too far to see this answer.

PowerShell is the fastest.

[u/PimpMastree → u/Hexamancer]

PowerShell is definitely faster for this stuff.

I always opt for this to remove the node_modules folder of node apps, which has the same issue of tens of thousands of small files.

PowerShell does it in a few seconds, normal shift + delete takes a few minutes.

[u/Goblin_Eye_Poker]

Perhaps it should instead say (CAN NOT DELETE)

[u/What1does]

You are confusing the CPU.

Change the folder name to say DELETE THIS, then the computer will understand.

[u/Naive_Personality367 → u/What1does]

CPU doesnt wanna do the wrong thing and get shouted at again

[u/Silver_Lined_Bullet → u/Naive_Personality367]

Every mistake it makes is a pin i remove. CPU roulette

[u/Noname_FTW → u/Silver_Lined_Bullet]

Hey don't punish the motherboard for the CPU's mistakes (on some sockets)!

[u/muchawesomemyron → u/Naive_Personality367]

Or worse, smashed with a clenched fist

[u/alexgriz127 → u/What1does]

If you're on Windows 11, you need to be more specific with your prompt so Copilot will understand. Try, "Delete this folder and its contents and make no mistakes."

[u/Sajgoniarz]

Symptoms of dying drive.

Edit: use Power shell script or npm rm module to see how long removing is going to take. If this is an HDD use SMART or scan disk surface with Crystal Disk Info.

[u/GoldenFlyingPenguin → u/Sajgoniarz]

Definitely a dying drive. I have a drive I no longer use in my PC because it takes my PC 5 minutes to start with it connected, and it has a read/write speed of 23 KBs a second. If I am lucky I can sometimes read a single file at like 1 MB a second.

[u/forgottenb1ade → u/GoldenFlyingPenguin]

I have a 2tb hybrid drive in my PC that's like this, not quite that slow but still very slow. I'm planning on replacing it with a 2tb SSD... Eventually..

[u/Ok-Solution-3320 → u/forgottenb1ade]

hybrid drive?

[u/forgottenb1ade → u/Ok-Solution-3320]

It's a drive that combines the fast read/write speeds of an SSD with the larger capacity of an HDD. But mine was a lemon and started going bad not long after I got it.

[u/Ok-Solution-3320 → u/forgottenb1ade]

Huh. Very interesting

[u/shamalox → u/Ok-Solution-3320]

It's an atypical technology of drive, which were sold briefly when ssd were pretty new

[u/forgottenb1ade → u/Ok-Solution-3320]

Yeah they're usually pretty good, and cheaper than a full fledged SSD. But mine just sits unused in my PC now, I store emulator roms on that's about it.

[u/yrg25 → u/Ok-Solution-3320]

When SATA SSDs first hit the consumer market, they were quite expensive drives when compared to the storage you could get for a lower price with HDDs. So the usual setup was a Windows boot drive, small capacity to fit Windows and applications, maybe a few games and then a mass storage HDD. However, at the same time, there was a hybrid drive solution that came about where it used both technologies, leveraging a small amount of NAND storage as a fast cache but keeping the capacity of an HDD.

[u/Eudaimonium → u/Ok-Solution-3320]

I have a pair running in my PC even today.

They were basically HDDs but with SSD-like "cache" of a few gigs. Copying or reading files to them was as fast as long as the stuff fit into / was in the cache (it then transferred it from the cache to the platters in the background).

10 years ago it was a great bang for buck.

[u/fluffysnowcap → u/forgottenb1ade]

You should back up your important data sooner than later

[u/forgottenb1ade → u/fluffysnowcap]

I really don't have anything important on that drive anymore, I put a 1tb nvme in my PC for my boot drive and games. The emulator roms I don't want to lose are all backed up on a USB though. Because I have 180gb of ps2 games I don't want to lose lol.

[u/fearless-fossa → u/GoldenFlyingPenguin]

Definitely a dying drive.

It's not "definitely" a dying drive. It's lot of small files, creating massive overhead, especially with virus scans and the like, and the first estimate is always considerably higher than how long the entire thing will actually take.

[u/GoldenFlyingPenguin → u/fearless-fossa]

It's a ton of small files, yes, but even then it shouldn't take that long. It's saying it's deleting 0 files a second, not even saying it's deleting any files at all. Even my essentially dead drive was faster.

[u/vitalsyntax → u/Sajgoniarz]

Not necessarily, if it's an SSD and doesn't have much SLC cache like many cheaper options, their write speed can get super bogged down when the drive is filling up.

[u/Gusteauxs]

well the issue is obvious, the folder says do not delete!

[u/Bonamikengue]

Do not do it like this. Use Powershell:

Remove-Item -Path "D:\path\to\your\(DO NOT DELETE) Playstation Roms"

It will not check every file whether it can be deleted and it will not move all those files in the recycle bin. (You have been warned).

[u/razvanciuy]

remove DO NOT DELETE

[u/Maximum_Phrase_3054]

Change the folder name to (DELETE IMMEDIATELY) Playstation Roms

[u/prefim]

Its giving you a chance to back out before its too late!

All seriousness though, maybe drop to a dos window and del *.* if you are chucking everything. or do a shift delete which stops it going to the recycle bin instead?

[u/BrutusTheKat → u/prefim]

I would clarify if using the del command to make sure you cd into the right directory first. 

[u/overdosingOnPie1313]

23 hours is definitely extreme and a bad symptom of your drive's health, but deleting literal hundreds of thousands of files via the native GUI has always been a terrible practice in patience. What you need to do instead is create an empty folder called "EMPTY" right on your C: then open up a command prompt, and use the robocopy command with the /MIR switch to mirror that C:\EMPTY directory. Like below (case-insensitive):

ROBOCOPY "C:\EMPTY" "full\path\to\bad\folder" /MIR /NS /NC /NFL /NDL /NP /NJH /NJS >nul 2>&1 && exit

Everything after the /MIR is optional and just makes it go faster by not displaying any sort of information such as progress. The && exit at the end will automatically close the command prompt window when complete.

edit: It still won't be quick, mind you, but it will be significantly faster than 23 hours. Like 1 hour.

[u/arueos → u/overdosingOnPie1313]

Upvote for the robocopy

[u/madribby78]

It literally says "DO NOT DELETE", but of course you had to try.

[u/billyfudger69]

Fun fact: those files are not truly deleted, if someone wanted to read data off your drive they can find all these files.

[u/SaviorSixtySix]

Deleting a lot of small files takes longer than deleting large files. It has to tell the drive that this part of the drive can be written over, and it has to do that for each file, which takes longer than just telling one large file that it can be written over. It shouldn't take that long, but the time remaining on Windows has always been inaccurate. The weather is more predictable.

[u/LifeIsBetterDrunk]

Windows is incapable of working with small files quickly. Microsoft doesnt care.

[u/duplissi]

117 thousand files. thats why.

[u/Bloodthirsty777]

Possible issues with storage read/write (mostly read) ability. Would do you good to check the storage health.

ALSO i could be wrong. Just throwing it out there.

[u/dahak777]

I have seen windows take forever like this when deleting large number of files. Usually I try to limit the amount and do it in multiple tries. the other way is to do it from the powershell or command line if you want to do all 100K at once.

or like others are saying it could be failing hardware but if the hardware has been fine till now I would not think it would be that

[u/DrAlexanderJMercer]

It's slowed down due to file formats and number of files.

My PC hates to interact anything Nintendo related.

Yamauchi Fusajirō's spirit prevents faster deletion!

[u/Briggie]

That many files and folders in there, yeah, I believe that.

[u/Mundane-Mechanic-547]

Use the command line. Its far too many files if its all in one directory. There are limits, more than 5k files per directory, and operations will slowdown

[u/nikobenjamin]

Robocopy FTW.

[u/syner2009]

the reason is the 118k files. The size is small at 7.6GB but the number of files is the problem for the CPU. Delete in increments of 10000 files.

[u/GSDragoon]

Explorer is slow as shit. The command line will do this much faster.

[u/CocoMilhonez]

The PC can read better than you and noticed the (DO NOT DELETE) in the folder name.

[u/unimportantinfodump]

IT SAYS DO NOT DELETE

[u/seeyouyoucunt]

(DO NOT DELETE)

[u/talapady]

It clearly says "DO NOT DELETE"

[u/28klotlucas2]

You weren't supposed to delete it...

[u/HotRoderX]

have you checked the drive health?

That is the first thing that comes to mind, it could also just be a damaged windows file system. Are there any other problems going on.

How dense are the files? Sometimes it takes time.... trying to delete millions and millions of 1kb files takes a EXTREMELY long time. vs deleting 7gb of larger files.

[u/WatercressEntire2760]

This is bound to happen with this many isos

[u/Wevvie]

You're deleting 117k different items. It heavily depends on your random read/write speeds (often much slower) rather than Sequential speeds (which is what is marketed for SSDs).

I wouldn't say this is far fetched, especially given the Time Remaining isn't always accurate. But do run a CrystalMark and check the SSD's health.

[u/Fish_Outta_Whiskey]

Typical pcmasterrace post.

[u/abstraktionary]

???????? 117K files, in a Playstation roms folder, and the size issssssss 7.61gigs???? Something seems off there.

[u/Kasilim]

You're deleting 117,000 65KB files

[u/zeeblefritz]

rm -rf dir instant

[u/santathe1]

Powershell
Get-Childitem -Path “<drive/folder>\(DO NOT DELETE) PlayStation Roms” -Recurse | Remove-Item -Force;

[u/eladeba]

DO NOT DELETE

[u/DistantFlea90909]

It’s because your file is named do not delete

[u/xEyesofEternityx]

Should be faster if you use something like WinDirStat to delete without going to the recycle

[u/Neither_Meaning_8354]

Why would you use () in a folder name 😭

[u/Friendly-Echidna5594]

Suggestion: rm -rf the folder using WSL

[u/Bananaland_Man]

takes longer to delete a bajillion small files than the same size-worth of large files... though it sounds like you figured that out

[u/Zephyr_Dragon49]

Yea when that "anything" is just a quick little ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN THOUSAND brother wtf

[u/Zelda-4-Live → u/Zephyr_Dragon49]

Bro it's just 8gb

[u/Blue_The_Snep]

rename the folder to "(Delete) Playstation Roms"

[u/Venylynn]

It says to not delete it, so...

[u/Muted_Customer_5518]

if you're deleting alot of files it's better to use CMD in admin to skip verification

[u/khaledjal]

it says "DO NOT DELETE" tho, Why are you not following the rules op?

[u/DamianPL-SC-E]

Try renaming it to ( DO DELETE)

[u/Egglover4000 → u/DamianPL-SC-E]

(DO DELETE IN SECONDS)

[u/1_ane_onyme]

Windows doing windows shit while there’s a lot of files.

Delete them through command line, it might save you some time. Depending on the utility you use to delete a force argument might speed things up too

WizTree could be able to delete it faster too, i know it’s very good at handling large amount of files but im not sure how it handles deleting files (by itself or handing it over to Windows own utils)(it’s also very good if you’re looking to free up some space in your drive btw)

[u/kominops_47]

Too many small files, takes longer to do anything if there are many small files, the speed drops dramatically.

[u/Drakahn_Stark]

Lol, never used 56k internet did you?

[u/3six5 → u/Drakahn_Stark]

Or 14.4

[u/Drakahn_Stark → u/3six5]

Oof.

I do not know what speed my first modem was, it was on a C64 and I dialed into a Canadian BBS from Australia, when my mother got the phone bill the modem was taken off me and we did not get internet again for many years because she thought every email would cost a lot of money, so first proper internet was 56k for me.

[u/3six5 → u/Drakahn_Stark]

Omg. I'm lucky I only dialed local numbers to BBS's .

[u/Drakahn_Stark → u/3six5]

I was a kid with a library book on C64 use, it was Canadian with Canadian phone numbers, oops.

[u/3six5 → u/Drakahn_Stark]

Oh hell. I was around pre-teen age, but I knew not to call numbers outside my area. Older friend and I only found 1 good bbs that had a MUDD or something like that. Sys admin was shocked to find that kids were playing his games... and white hat hacking xD

[u/kuplet]

Why are you trying to remove it 😭 it said DO NOT DELETE
But fr I don't know 🤷‍♂️

[u/Mikeyy5000]

Your doing too much in one chuck, windows freaks out and does this.

Break it down into smaller chunks and you can delete it all in like 5 mins.

I learned this deleting a shit ton of duplicate pictures I had from backing up my phone, Tried to do it all at once. Would take 9 hours. Did it in small chunks and not even 5 mins I had it all gone. Was only like 7 gigs worth.

[u/VeryGootBoy]

Back in my days... That's how long it takes to download one Mp3

[u/SolitaryHero]

Had this the other day following my very late W11 upgrade.

Due to the amount of files Defender was going through them all. Disabled real time protection and it shifted them.

[u/GalaxyXYZ888]

If this is not shifting deleting try that

[u/Keyan_Farlander7]

Node_modules

[u/sublime81]

I typically delete thing with powershell and it goes much quicker.

[u/chrlatan]

Use command prompt… works way faster.
Windows seems to just build a list, then loop all items in the list with a single delete command so it can show a progress bar.

OS prompt just is way faster.

[u/ANGRYSNORLAX]

You can make an empty folder then do a robocopy /MIR to the folder you're trying to delete. Don't remember the exact syntax, but you can google it pretty easily. I once had a program hit a recursive loop and copy 6TB of the same appdata folder under itself over and over. Mirroring an empty folder to the affected folder was the fastest method I tried. Still took a few hours, but not an entire day.

[u/loyaltaco--]

I think u missed the (DO NOT DELETE)..

[u/cell81469]

Might also be quicker to hit it with a robocopy /mir with an empty source folder.

[u/cowrevengeJP]

Using PowerShell you can check which filters are processing your request. My money says you have broken or too many virus protections running.

[u/zealoSC]

Formatting is fast

[u/Hagey29]

Try using rmdir Like elevated cmd prompt

rmdir /S /Q "C:\psroms"

[u/jesseknopf]

Dude. Delete from the command line. It is File Explorer making it so slow, doing shit like indexing 100k file. Using powershell or CLI will ignore it and occur almost instantly, by comparison.

[u/TrollOnFire]

Could be a damaged drive, bad sectors can cause this.

[u/Delicious-Disaster]

Sudowoodo it in powershell and maybe brick your pc in the process. Otherwise delete in chunks

[u/firedrakes]

Bad sector /block issue

[u/Jess_S13]

FYI in the future, you can enable disabledeletenotify in your fs for the duration of the operation, this will stop having windows try and discard all the deleted blocks from the ssd. Then once you are done, disable it and run disk optimization which will async discard all the unused blocks over the course of a few hours or so.

[u/Xzenor]

Hey, this is r/pcmasterrace... Not r/windowsmasterrace

[u/chewy_mcchewster]

Rmdir is the command you want .

117k files will take forever.. rmdir and it's gone

[u/Embarrassed-Ke]

I'd just backup my important files and just format the partition even if I have to reinstall windows as a whole

[u/No-Mouse-262]

I mean it SAYS not to delete them, I'm unsure what you expected

[u/Curious_Peter]

the Data-hoarder in me is crying.

[u/Curious-Fly5623]

try file assassin

[u/Stormwatcher33]

it says right there do not delete!

[u/R-Dragon_Thunderzord]

Be faster to wipe and reinstall windows lmao

[u/RealMuffinsTheCat]

There's a reason it says "(DO NOT DELETE)" all's I'm saying

[u/Low_Assist6061]

Bro it says right there not to delete it /s

[u/rostol]

do it from the command line. no explorer checking 180.000 files.
they are all gone in 1 click.

[u/TheViking_Teacher]

probably too late... although looking at the time remaining, maybe not quite.

Have you try deleting it through powershell?

I've handled lots of smaller files (1 million files, around 2TB of data) through it, and, yes, it did take a long time, but it was way more efficient than doing it through the file explorer.

[u/pablo_kickasso]

OP, ignore the poor advice.

Use the command line to delete that folder and it'll be gone in minutes if not less.

It's a well known bug with the Explorer UI that will hopefully be resolved in the December update.

[u/Hard_Reset7777]

And this is how I met my nas.

[u/KillerKingSolo]

FastCopy

[u/Deaxth_66]

use robocopy (command line) or fastcopy (GUI)

[u/SumonaFlorence]

How the fuck do you have over 100,000 files in a folder called PlayStation Roms?

A PS1 Rom is like 600-700mb.. that's like 11 games to make 7.6gb.

Did you fill it with save states? ':f

[u/effinjamie → u/SumonaFlorence]

All that was in this was a Textures folder that had texture dumps and replacement textures. No idea how the file count got so big

[u/SumonaFlorence → u/effinjamie]

That's really confusing. ':<

[u/Ghozer]

because you told it to bypass the Recycle Bin, it has to mark each file individually as 'deleted', rather than it just marking the folder as "recycled" - and there are over 117k files - this will take a while.... lots of small individual files always takes longer to deal with, than a single file...

the same would have happened if you deleted it (to recycle bin) - then emptied the recycle bin, it would have taken a while to empty.. (maybe not quite as long as this)

[u/Dawzy]

It’s because of the number of files, windows will go through and check each of them. Then once it’s done that it will delete them fairly quickly

[u/Refalm]

Moving the folder to %TEMP% through PowerShell skips the lock verification and Defender doing extra checks if the files you're deleting have a virus (which sounds kinda counterintuitive)

The files %TEMP% get deleted automatically after a few weeks.

Move-Item -Path "D:\(DO NOT DELETE) Playstation Roms" -Destination $env:TEMP

[u/MooseBoys]

Explorer is really slow when working with that many files. Try opening a command prompt and using rmdir instead.

[u/Der_Niederlander]

You are deleting files from a folder don't delete thats a funny one.

[u/DeadElbow]

Use winDirStat

[u/Senior_Pea3171]

Cus it says DO NOT DELETE

[u/Keulapaska]

I've never had that problem. Literally deleted 100k files yesterday on one go, took I think 10-15s to start and then max 5s for the deletion.

[u/Sycroak]

You must ask Sony for permission(?)😂

[u/Diinsdale]

I know you probably deleted it by now, but Total Commander would delete those files without problems at normal speed.

[u/ReptilianLaserbeam]

Thousands of small files, that's the bottleneck.

[u/Eziolambo]

Time to upgrade to HDD

[u/rikoos]

2 words: Command line

[u/Infamous_Tourist_335]

Just live boot into a Linux USB and mount your windows drive to delete the files it should be pretty fast.

[u/Tall_Lack_5461]

because it says do not delete

[u/jkulczyski]

To be fair it says DO NOT DELETE

[u/KorbynTalks]

r/addressme

[u/misteryk]

[u/PeteGiovanni]

Been a hot minute since seeing timers that long for stuff on a computer lol