Remove folders and files in Windows

fast remove files windows

The worst way is to send to Recycle Bin: you still need to delete them. Next worst is shift+delete with Windows Explorer: it wastes loads of time checking the contents before starting deleting anything.

Next best is to use rmdir /s/q foldername from the command line. del /f/s/q foldername is good too, but it leaves behind the directory structure.

The best I've found is a two line batch file with a first pass to delete files and outputs to nul to avoid the overhead of writing to screen for every singe file. A second pass then cleans up the remaining directory structure:

del /f/s/q foldername > nul
rmdir /s/q foldername
This is nearly three times faster than a single rmdir, based on time tests with a Windows XP encrypted disk, deleting ~30GB/1,000,000 files/15,000 folders: rmdir takes ~2.5 hours, del+rmdir takes ~53 minutes. More info at Super User.

This is a regular task for me, so I usually move the stuff I need to delete to C:\stufftodelete and have those del+rmdir commands in a deletestuff.bat batch file. This is scheduled to run at night, but sometimes I need to run it during the day so the quicker the better.

obliterate.bat

@echo off 
del /f/s/q %1 > nul
rmdir /s/q %1

Windows tools sometimes don't work as they should. See this for instance:

Bug 727551 - Create a Windows-native alternate to msys rm.exe to avoid common problems deleting files
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=727551

And here's an alternate tool to delete files in Windows:
https://github.com/vvuk/winrm

Alternate runnable for Node.js
https://github.com/isaacs/rimraf

@elifarley thanks for the tip. I had this problem with some long paths on Windows 8.