Slow file deletion

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anthony R. Gold
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A

Anthony R. Gold

I've just started with a new laptop - much like others except a bit more
memory (2GB) and faster HDD (7.2k SATA) under XP and one behaviour is
mystifying me - deleting very large files is very slow. By very large I
mean over 10GB(*) and by slow I mean over 15 minutes. No error messages,
nothing locked AFAICT, just mysteriously very very slow. BTW the same type
of deletion is instantaneous when done in safe mode. And also I get the
same behaviours (fast under safe mode and slow under normal XP) whether
deleting large files from the local SATA drive or from USB attached drives.

* I need to do this as I make successive backups using PQ DriveImage or
Ghost 10 and old archives need to be removed to make space for newer ones.

Anyone got any ideas?

Tony
 
Anthony R. Gold said:
I've just started with a new laptop - much like others except a bit more
memory (2GB) and faster HDD (7.2k SATA) under XP and one behaviour is
mystifying me - deleting very large files is very slow. By very large I
mean over 10GB(*) and by slow I mean over 15 minutes. No error messages,
nothing locked AFAICT, just mysteriously very very slow. BTW the same
type
of deletion is instantaneous when done in safe mode. And also I get the
same behaviours (fast under safe mode and slow under normal XP) whether
deleting large files from the local SATA drive or from USB attached
drives.

* I need to do this as I make successive backups using PQ DriveImage or
Ghost 10 and old archives need to be removed to make space for newer ones.

Anyone got any ideas?

Tony
Click to expand...

You need to determine the cause by the usual process of elimination:
Launch msconfig.exe, then disable all tasks under the Startup tab.
Disconnect your machine from the Internet while the virus scanner is
disabled. You can now reactivat the disabled tasks in pairs until you
have found the culprit.

Use this command from the Command Prompt to create a 10 GByte
test file quickly:
fsutil.exe file createnew d:\big.bin 10000000000
 
Anthony said:
I've just started with a new laptop - much like others except a bit more
memory (2GB) and faster HDD (7.2k SATA) under XP and one behaviour is
mystifying me - deleting very large files is very slow. By very large I
mean over 10GB(*) and by slow I mean over 15 minutes. No error messages,
nothing locked AFAICT, just mysteriously very very slow. BTW the same type
of deletion is instantaneous when done in safe mode. And also I get the
same behaviours (fast under safe mode and slow under normal XP) whether
deleting large files from the local SATA drive or from USB attached drives.

* I need to do this as I make successive backups using PQ DriveImage or
Ghost 10 and old archives need to be removed to make space for newer ones.

Anyone got any ideas?

Tony
Click to expand...

Not running a search facility (eg Google desktop) are you?

Phil, London
 
Anthony R. Gold said:
I've just started with a new laptop - much like others except a bit more
memory (2GB) and faster HDD (7.2k SATA) under XP and one behaviour is
mystifying me - deleting very large files is very slow. By very large I
mean over 10GB(*) and by slow I mean over 15 minutes. No error messages,
nothing locked AFAICT, just mysteriously very very slow. BTW the same type
of deletion is instantaneous when done in safe mode. And also I get the
same behaviours (fast under safe mode and slow under normal XP) whether
deleting large files from the local SATA drive or from USB attached drives.

* I need to do this as I make successive backups using PQ DriveImage or
Ghost 10 and old archives need to be removed to make space for newer ones.

Anyone got any ideas?

Tony
Click to expand...
Is it similarly slow moving them?

Could be your virus checker being over enthusiastic and scanning the
file. Depending on how XP does a deletion, it could be scanning
multiple times.

Can you tell it to ignore files with whatever extension Ghost uses for
its archives?
 
Is it similarly slow moving them?
Click to expand...

As I just want rid of old archives I've never tried that. And anyway I'm
not sure what it would prove.
Could be your virus checker being over enthusiastic and scanning the
file. Depending on how XP does a deletion, it could be scanning
multiple times.
Click to expand...

Closing down Norton makes no different.

Deleting using cmd.exe and the del command is equally slow.

No other processes are showing any activity during the deletions.
Can you tell it to ignore files with whatever extension Ghost uses for
its archives?
Click to expand...

Renaming the files from .v2i used by DriveImage and Ghost 10 to something
different does not speed their deletion.

Tony
 
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