How to delete Enormous files and folders from HDD... that takes lot of time to be detected in window

i have a HDD full of spool data.. that has occupied 78 GB now i want to delete them but when i m using the delete function from windows... its taking too much time....

14 hrs still it is searching for files.... can anyone help? ASAP

mail me at

sohailsmumbai@hotmail.com

your help is appreciaed in advance

How to delete Enormous files and folders from HDD... that takes lot of time to be detected in windows..?windows media player

You don't specify the operating system the spool files are on so I will assume for now it is Windows.

The fastest way to delete the spool files is from the DOS command prompt. You will need to know the directory(s) where the spool files are located, and what the "filename spec" is.

For this example, let's assume the directory is "C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS" and the spool file names ALL end with ".spl" (I made this up, you need to verify it).

So you would do the following:

%26gt; Start / Run / CMD # to open DOS window

%26gt; cd "C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS" # change to the directory where the spool files are located

%26gt; dir *.spl /p # verify that these are the files you are interested in ... one screen at a time

%26gt; del *.spl # delete all the ".spl" files (or whatever the extension is)

Couple of caveats and things to consider:

- you need to verify what the spool file names are, and whether you want to delete all of them or not. If you want to delete only SOME of them, do not use the procedure above, which uses a wildcard (i.e. "*" ) and will delete all the spool files.

- you need to verify the directory, though it sounds like you already know that from your question

Finally, it will still take a while to delete all the files, but it will be faster than doing it from the Windows Explorer interface, that I can gaurantee. What I would suggest is that you delete the files in groups based on the filename, which reduces the "tax" on the operating system, and ensures that if you make a mistake, you don't make it on everything at one shot.

For example, spool files probably have some sequential naming scheme, so you could do something like:

%26gt; del xrba*.spl

%26gt; del xrbb*.spl

et cetera. You'll have to look at the file names to see if you can do that.

I have never deleted 78 GB worth of files at one shot so I don't know exactly how long it will take. To estimate I will assume each spool file is on average 100K. 78GB = 81788928 Kilobytes. That would mean 817,889 files. Assume 1000 files deleted per second (one per millisecond) would require 817 seconds, or 14 minutes.

In practice it might take quite a bit longer, so expect to wait 15 to 60 minutes for the deletions to complete.

I hope this helps. If you have additional questions email me via my profile page.

Good luck.

How to delete Enormous files and folders from HDD... that takes lot of time to be detected in windows..?windows live messenger internet explorer

Boot up into safe mode. Then just delet them with shift +del to permanetly delete them.
Ya wat u do is first of all take a back up of all the important files that u need .transfer thm to a external hard disk %26amp; thn format ur internal hard disk.This should rely help you
here is an arcticle on Microsofts site.. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=21622...

it says 2000, but if you you any NT, shoudl work (XP, 2003, etc)

now the 78 gb, thats a lot, so it will probably take a lot of time. if thats on another HD, try foramttting it if there is no other data needed on that harddrive. that would be the easiest way.

good luck, hope it helps..
try shift delete.

It will not go to the recylce bin so should be faster.

If you have LOTS of files, windows will still have to find each file and delete them.

The other way is to reformat the hard drive...

(if you don't have anything else on it)
Try http://www.ccleaner.com
Format your hard disk. OK?