Windows 10: Taking more than a day to delete thousands of small files?

I have a 1TB SSD that has a folder named temp with 65,000+ png files in it. I'm trying to delete that folder and it takes forever, either from Explorer or from the command line.

I have tried

del /s/f/q E:\temp > nul rd /s/f/q E:\temp

and it has been running for over a day now. The cherry on top is that writing other files to the drive is cripplingly slow while this delete operation is underway, thus completely crippling my workflow.

Am I missing something?

submitted by /u/spec84721
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:)

 

deleting hard drive files

Hi,

May we know what type of file are you trying to delete? Would it be Office documents, media files, or picture files? If you're trying to delete files for free some space on your device. We suggest to perform a Disc Cleanup. Kindly follow the steps below to
perform the task:

• Type in Cortana Disc Cleanup
  
• Choose the files to delete
  
• Click on "Clean up system files"
  
• Click on Ok
  

For any concerns, don't hesitate to get back to us.

Regards.

 

Thousands of hidden files beginning with ._

I was cleaning up my music tags and the program I was using revealed that I have thousands of small files that begin with "._"

I am guessing this is a result of changing from a Mac to a PC.

Normally I would leave these alone but, because I have so many of them, they are making tagging music very difficult and I would like to remove them. They are all in my C:\Users\user\Music folder and sub directories.

Any ideas on how I can delete these and leave all my audio files alone?

 

Thousands of hidden files beginning with ._

The hidden files beginning with '._' are the 'resource fork' part of a file as used by MacOS. There is one for each data file on a Mac. They hold metadata about the file such as the date it was last opened.

When you export files from a Mac to a usb drive in order to copy them to a PC then you invariably end up getting these too. Unless you have iTunes installed on your PC then they are unlikely to be of any use in Windows and could be deleted. If you do use iTunes in Windows then I'd leave them alone.

Invisible files with "._" prefix are created on some shared volumes and external disks - CNET

If you are completely sure you want to delete them all, then open a Command Prompt (not an admin one, a normal one will do). NB: these steps will delete them completely with no option to restore them from the Recycle Bin so you need to be really sure you don't need them for any Apple-based software such as iTunes!

The easiest way to find and open the command prompt is to click on Start and type COMMAND, then use the commands...

CD MUSIC
DEL ._* /A:H /S /P

The /A :H option says search for hidden files, the /S option says search sub-folders. The optional /P option will prompt for confirmation for each file to be deleted, leave it out if you are really sure you want to delete every one of them. In this example I have copied some "._" files into my Music folder from from a usb of photos that was made on a Mac.