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Earlier today, I deleted a large folder on my external hard drive by clicking on the folder's icon and hitting the delete button. Note that I will NEVER do this again. The folder's icon disappeared immediately but, since then (4+ hours), I've had a "Recycling" dialog with an endlessly scrolling (and hence, useless) progress bar on my screen.

The dialog informs me it is recycling 377232 items (23.6 GB) but it doesn't tell me how far it's gotten or how much is left to do. I don't see any of the deleted files in my Recycle Bin, presumably because the only thing which would appear is the folder itself, when it's finished deleting.

How can I figure out how much longer this #@^$# deletion is going to take, or at least what percentage of the files have already been processed? What would happen if I hit the cancel button on the dialog or unplugged my hard drive?

I'm using Windows 7 by the way.

Oliver Salzburg
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Swiftheart
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2 Answers2

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If you want to permanently delete the files, select them, and press SHIFT-DELETE and then the files are not transferred to the recycle bin. This operation will go MUCH faster.

mdpc
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Large external deletes take upto a full day, cleared heaps of photos of a galaxy note 3 on USB3 (around 18gb), took around 20hrs over all.

amckern
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