Solved Why so long to delete files from external HDD?

I'm doing some work on my brother in law's laptop. I used his external HDD to create a system image which worked fine. I also see backups from computers he doesn't even have anymore that are old, some from as far back as 2003. Anyway, when I selecet them and hit delete, it takes 20 minutes or more to delete these old backups. Why does it take so long? I turned off moving the files to the recycle bin so it should be just a matter of the OS marking that space available, right?

For the most part the files are deleted bam, bam, bam but every once in awhile it will pause on deletion of a single file for a minute or more. There are no error messages so I don't believe these pauses are due to read errors.

Any suggestions on speeding up things?

Antiviruses like to interfere with activity on externals. You could try disabling that.
You could also (while the external is plugged in) right click the trash bin and tell it not to cache items from the external. (this will remove your ability to recover items deleted from that drive from the recycle bin.

...but honestly it's a feature I probably use once or twice a year anyway.

I mentioned in my original post that I had turned off moving to the recycle bin but I had forgotten about turning off the AV. I turned off real-time protection on MSE and that seemed to speed things up. Thanks for the reply. Now I just need to remeber to turn those things back on when I am done!

Try another/faster USB or deselect Always show icons, never thumbnails from the View Tab on Folder Options. The ext. HDD could also be faulty.

strollin said:

I mentioned in my original post that I had turned off moving to the recycle bin but I had forgotten about turning off the AV. I turned off real-time protection on MSE and that seemed to speed things up. Thanks for the reply. Now I just need to remeber to turn those things back on when I am done!

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Yeah, sorry I did read the post that was just before my coffee was ready this morning.
You may want to look into messing with write caching too. but it can make things a bit less reliable. So I do tend to leave it alone myself.

I doubt this has anything to do with AV interfering. Have you done a simple Check Disk on the hard drive to see if there are any errors or bad sectors? Excessive wait times and freezes for simple file operations is a symptom of such things.

FliGi7 said:

I doubt this has anything to do with AV interfering. Have you done a simple Check Disk on the hard drive to see if there are any errors or bad sectors? Excessive wait times and freezes for simple file operations is a symptom of such things.

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From personal experience I can tell you that they can and very often do.
It seems to have noticeably sped up his problem, as he marked the thread solved afterwards.

I guess I've just never used one that has ever interfered - and I've used a lot - so I can't say I've ever experienced that or that it would be considered a very often occurrence. It would be good to know what finally solved his problem.

If you think about it, the av is actually doing it's job by starting to aggressively investigate the new drive.
It also takes it upon itself to monitor the data stream between the computer and the device.

This is not so much a fault as a necessity for the av to do it's job thoroughly.

I'm not really certain why you've decided to argue this point with me.
Perhaps you should read about how av's actually work. Real-time protection can be a beast. Many of the av's filter so aggressively they actually create virtual devices complete with drivers and everything upon their installation specifically for the purpose of essentially monitoring all data moving through your system. (surprising how often viruses do manage to slip by all this if you ask me)

You seem to be thinking I am calling this some form of fault. It is as said just a minute ago pretty much a necessity though. His question was, how do I speed this up? I thought my reply was a logical one given the nature of the request.

The problem is drastically compounded with a usb drive as well.
Another solution would be to go eSATA, it can handle the back and forth data stream much better. USB always seems to work best when the majority of the data is flowing in one direction without interruption.

I didn't realize how sensitive of an issue this was with you. I wasn't arguing anything, actually, just stating my contrary experience. So, I'm not sure why you felt the need to go on a defensive tirade. I wasn't challenging your opinion on what might help, only addressing your blanket statement of "very often" and assumption that the fix was related to AV. I suppose I could argue each of your points since they're based on your opinion rather than fact but that wasn't the intention of my posts and isn't something I really care to do. We just both have different experiences with what an AV does and should be doing, so we can just leave it at that.

Perhaps we both misunderstood.

I was only trying to make a point though, I guess that did come off a little harsh so I'll apologize for that.

At any rate it's not an opinion, it is a measurable fact.

Throw a ton of viruses on a cd and finalize it.
Then put it in a system with aggressive real time protection.
Maybe you'll get some hint.
AV's also commonly block system restore from functioning properly.
They come with a ton of verifiable problems associated with them. The only reason I'm pushing this point so hard is that I honestly believe its far better to understand that there is in fact a downside to using them. As this allows you to properly anticipate and avoid those downsides.
Weighed overall I still by far do suggest people use them.
There are many times when you discover there is good reason your av has a snooze feature though.

Right, real-time, on-access scanning by AV's can be brutal on a system. The only thing up for debate is whether this being performed on data being deleted should be expected from an efficient and effective AV, or at the very least have enough of an effect to cause noticeable slowdown. I don't believe this should, or does, occur with an efficient and effective AV on a healthy system as I've never experience that before.

I want to be clear, though, that I am not not (double negative) advocating the use of AV - quite contrary. I believe they're absolutely necessary and do often have downsides. I just wouldn't run an AV that caused a noticeable delay for a simple file deletion. The files are destined to be deleted and are not being accessed in any form in which they'd be executed, so I don't see any reason for an effective AV to have much, if any, interaction in that process.