File deletes unusually slow

[Rhino]

A few weeks ago, I first noticed that it takes an unusually long time to
delete files on my computer. I'm talking about very small files for the most
part, often just 1 KB. I right click on the file, choose delete, and the
message about the file being deleted comes up, just like normal. But it can
take 10 seconds or more to delete even a tiny file. That doesn't seem right
to me. The delete proceeds and succeeds without any error messages.

Should I be concerned? If yes, what should I do to fix this?

I am running XP Pro with SP2. The computer is just over a year old and has a
quad-core processor. I have 2 GB of memory.

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

A few weeks ago, I first noticed that it takes an unusually long time to
delete files on my computer. I'm talking about very small files for the
most part, often just 1 KB. I right click on the file, choose delete, and
the message about the file being deleted comes up, just like normal. But
it can take 10 seconds or more to delete even a tiny file. That doesn't
seem right to me. The delete proceeds and succeeds without any error
messages.

Should I be concerned? If yes, what should I do to fix this?

I am running XP Pro with SP2. The computer is just over a year old and has
a quad-core processor. I have 2 GB of memory.

It's not the size of the file that matters but the number of files you have
in the current folder. How many? And does the problem persist while in Safe
Mode?

 

[Tim Slattery]

It's not the size of the file that matters but the number of files you have
in the current folder. How many? And does the problem persist while in Safe
Mode?

I beg to differ. If you're deleting the file from Windows Explorer,
then the OS is going to copy it to the Recycle Bin. That process will
certainly take longer with a bigger file. I'm not at all sure why the
number of files in the current folder would make a difference. In
FAT32 the file system has to make a sequential search of the directory
entries to file the one it wants, so there's some reason there. But
NTFS uses a btree structure, which makes it very quick to find any
entry.

 

[Rhino]

I beg to differ. If you're deleting the file from Windows Explorer,
then the OS is going to copy it to the Recycle Bin. That process will
certainly take longer with a bigger file. I'm not at all sure why the
number of files in the current folder would make a difference. In
FAT32 the file system has to make a sequential search of the directory
entries to file the one it wants, so there's some reason there. But
NTFS uses a btree structure, which makes it very quick to find any
entry.

For what it's worth, I am running NTFS on my hard drives. The folders from
which I was trying to delete files did not have thousands or even hundreds
of files in them, more like 10 or 20. Mind you, there were some sub-folders
containing layers of sub-folders within them: does that make a difference?
For instance if I am deleting in C:\mydir\myfile and mydir contains only a
dozen items but some of them are folders containing additional layers of
subfolders, is that going to make the delete of 'myfile' unusually slow?

I never used to find that it took long to delete files unless perhaps they
were very large. But now even tiny files take many seconds to delete.

 

[John Wunderlich]

A few weeks ago, I first noticed that it takes an unusually long
time to delete files on my computer. I'm talking about very small
files for the most part, often just 1 KB. I right click on the
file, choose delete, and the message about the file being deleted
comes up, just like normal. But it can take 10 seconds or more to
delete even a tiny file. That doesn't seem right to me. The delete
proceeds and succeeds without any error messages.

Should I be concerned? If yes, what should I do to fix this?

I am running XP Pro with SP2. The computer is just over a year old
and has a quad-core processor. I have 2 GB of memory.

Deleting a file should be a simple bookkeeping exercise of moving file
records from a directory to the recycle bin. If I were in your shoes,
I would do the following:

1) Right-click on the recycle bin and empty it.
2) Run a Disk Check in case there is a problem with file allocations
R-Click C: Drive -> Properties -> Tools (tab) -> Check Now
Click both check boxes and click "Start". You will get a warning
that the check will be done on next reboot. Then Reboot.
This can take a while, so reboot when you don't need your computer
for a while.
3) Do a disk defragment. Same as 2 above except click "defragment now"
instead of "Check Now".

If all that ends up not helping your problem, at least you know you
have a healthy disk.

Note that if you do have serious disk problems, running the disk check
has been known make things worse -- so a backup is recommended first if
you care about your data.

HTH,
John