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Mass deleting files in windows
How can I speed up the deleting of very large directories on XP?

Every now and then I need to delete a folder containing something like 500k files from an NTFS volume. I do this with Windows Explorer.

Since NTFS journals all the service data changes each deletion is carried out serially and so the whole 500k files deletion takes ages. I remember when I did the same in FAT32 it ran uncomparably faster.

Is there any way to speed up deletion of large number of files on NTFS volumes?

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marked as duplicate by Mehper C. Palavuzlar, Ivo Flipse Mar 18 '10 at 10:50


1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Open "Command Prompt" (cmd.exe) and run the following command:

del /f /s /q foldername
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