Speed-up large number of files deletion on NTFS volumes

Posted by sharptooth on Super User See other posts from Super User or by sharptooth
Published on 2010-03-17T08:01:57Z Indexed on 2010/03/17 8:11 UTC
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Filed under:

Windows

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ntfs

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filesystems

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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