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Quickly delete thousands of files in XP
I'm looking for a way to quickly delete many thousands of files from XP. I have directories each of which contains 100,000+ .csv files that need to be deleted. I've tried
del *.csv
which does delete the files but it takes about two hours for each folder that I run this script on. Is there a way that I can use to quickly delete the files? If not I can schedule a task to run nightly until this process finishes but I would like to have this finished today if at all possible.
Thanks for the help
del *.csv
which does delete the files but it takes about two hours for each folder that I run this script on. Is there a way that I can use to quickly delete the files? If not I can schedule a task to run nightly until this process finishes but I would like to have this finished today if at all possible.
Thanks for the help
There are several pieces of software which i believe simply delete the directories from the FAT or equivalent.
Perhaps one of these wouldbe quicker!
Perhaps one of these wouldbe quicker!
Try FileBoss or Mass Directory eraser.
ASKER
jdera:
Do you personally have any experience with either of these programs? There is critical data on the drives I am cleaning and cannot afford to lose anything but the csv files I am using. I actually came across these in my search but could not quickly find a decent number of reviews to trust them.
Do you personally have any experience with either of these programs? There is critical data on the drives I am cleaning and cannot afford to lose anything but the csv files I am using. I actually came across these in my search but could not quickly find a decent number of reviews to trust them.
First suggestion would be to backup data whatever solution you choose just before you do whatever, that is golden rule.
ASKER
Unfortunately backing up is not really a feasible option. The data is in a remote location we do not have physical access to and transfer across the internet is not feasible (hundreds of GB of data that would need to be backed up).
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ASKER
I'll pass that along to our IT department but I have a feeling it won't fly. We're a relatively small company generating videos from a lot of cameras. These videos are what we would need to backup. Typically we just send someone to swap hard drives and send us back the full ones.
Also the machines are at a client site and we are sharing their internet connection (we typically use very little bandwidth). Using the bandwidth to transfer this much data would not go over well with the client.
Also the machines are at a client site and we are sharing their internet connection (we typically use very little bandwidth). Using the bandwidth to transfer this much data would not go over well with the client.
ASKER
I ultimately just stuck with deleting from the command line after trying FileBoss which actually turned out slower than the command line approach. I gave the points to jdera for providing a lot of helpful information despite not coming up with a workable solution.
I think FastCopy can solve your problem.
It is free and you can download it from http://www.ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en
The deletion process starts slow but after a while it speeds up.
It is free and you can download it from http://www.ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en
The deletion process starts slow but after a while it speeds up.
@echo off
c:
cd c:\folder
rd/s subfolder
or if you want to keep the folder structure...
@echo off
c:
cd c:\folder
cd subfolder
del/s *.csv