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💻 Software

Mass deleting files in Windows

Fresh7 days ago
Mar 15, 2026150697 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

I have a directory, that contains ~ 3 million files in certain subdirectories on a Windows 2008 server. Manually deleting the files via SHIFT+DEL on the root dir takes ages. Is there any other way to do the deletion in a faster manner?

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
Unverified Fix
New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: Mass deleting files in Windows

Low Risk

WARNING: if you have symlinks to directories then will delete actual directories and not symlinks. Be very careful with this and do not run these commands unless you know there are no symlinks inside target directory. I regularly need to delete lots of files and directories from a WinXP encrypted drive, typically around 22 GB of 500,000 files in 45,000 folders. Deleting with Windows Explorer is rubbish because it wastes lots of time enumerating the files. I usually move the stuff I need to dele…

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