Why is deleting files on my USB 3 external HDD so slow?

There is 48GB in the recycle bin and it took forty minutes discovering and then deleting them. Maybe because I have turned indexing off?

Indexing is 'on'.

Out of curiosity, I'd be more interested in the number of files rather than the number of GB that data was made from. Are we talking about tens or possibly hundreds of thousands or even millions of files? Usually, when I see that kind of slow performancr it is because the system has to touch the entries for millions of files and it can only address so many file entries per second.

Yes, it was about 120,000 files.

Because "deleting" to the Recycle Bin isn't really deleting anything. All it really is is moving the files from one location to another. You want to actually delete something hold the Shift key before hitting Delete.

stormy13 said:

Because "deleting" to the Recycle Bin isn't really deleting anything. All it really is is moving the files from one location to another. You want to actually delete something hold the Shift key before hitting Delete.

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I believe that he was deleting files FROM the Recycle Bin, not TO the Recycle Bin. @kelper, please correct me if I have that wrong.

Could it be that the External drive is being read and held in memory before making the final deletion? Every action in the computer involves the CPU and Memory in some fashion and deletions are not simple like dumping an ashtray into the dust bin.

stormy13 said:

Because "deleting" to the Recycle Bin isn't really deleting anything. All it really is is moving the files from one location to another. You want to actually delete something hold the Shift key before hitting Delete.

Click to expand...

I wasn't deleting, I was deleting what was in the recycle bin of the external USB HDD.

hsehestedt said:

I believe that he was deleting files FROM the Recycle Bin, not TO the Recycle Bin. @kelper, please correct me if I have that wrong.

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Correct.

The deleting default is to store the file or information about the file in the Recycle Bin then later either recover or do a final deletion/emptying. If desired that storing can be bypassed and go directly to deletion. My NAS drive offers only Permanent deletion so I have to be careful that I really want to do it with clicking Yes or No, USB drives are the normal process.

NAS drive

Could you possibly provide a model number for that external drive? I want to lookup some specific details. I have some thoughts about what the cause could potentially be but I need to do a little bit of research.

Certainly!

Okay, here is a potential theory. Unfortunately, it looks like this will need to remain a theory for now...

I was wondering if that drive could possibly be an SMR drive. SMR causes overwrites of used blocks to be EXREMELY slow and that's what would need to happen for the directory entries being deleted when clearing the contents of the recycle bin. The fact that it had to do this for 100k+ files would only make the issue that much more painful.

I was not able to determine if that particular drive utilizes SMR or not, so this needs to remain a possible theory at the moment, but it's one possible logical explanation that I can think of. My research did at least tell me that mass file deletions are definitely one of the things that are severely impacted by hard disks utilizing SMR technology.

Nope, this is ancient Samsung (now Seagate) HDD which predates SMR.

Check out:

I bought it in June 2016!

SMR drives started shipping in 2013, so it's still possible, but again, it was just one theory. It's going to be difficult to say.

But my ultimate resolution to the issue: Get an SSD of the same size (1TB) along with an external enclosure. Is it free? No. But it can be had for well under $100 (US). Or, for roughly the same price (a few dollars more) you can get a standard 2.5" external HDD of 5TB capacity that seems to perform reasonably well. I have several of the WD Elements drives (4TB and 5TB) that seem to perform reasonably well. No, they are not speed demons, but they work well enough for what I use them for, and the speed is adequate.

Another option:


Same capacity as your HDD, but this little bad boy will do in excess of 500 MB/s writes, in a tiny thumb drive! Many people, including me, find that PNY actually seems to understate the speed as I often get over the 500MB/s write speeds (sustained).

I ordered this one. US$99.99 in the USA, £77.99 in the UK. I'll report back next week on it's speed with my modestly-specced laptop.

kelper said:

I wasn't deleting, I was deleting what was in the recycle bin of the external USB HDD.

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They are saying if you shift delete files on an external drive, it will be faster as its not moving them to the recycle bin. It avoids the recycle bin altogether, making a shorter wait.

Yes but that's irrelevant because I was emptying the recycle bin on an external USB HHD. The files had already been deleted over several weeks. I chose to delete the original files knowing I could restore later if needed.

As for a drive and case, I got this Sabrent case then put in a 1TB Samsung EVO 970 drive [the longest of the NVMe type], much more pocketable that the usual USB drives. It has a USB-C port and cable but I have adapter for computer's USB-A port.