Total commander: Deleting a large directory

In Total Commander, when you try to delete a directory with lots of files, if you just hit the del key, it might take a little while. If instead you right click on the directory and choose delete, it will be much faster. You can also open the command windows and use the dos command del as follows:

del <dir name> /s /q

The /s switch means all subdirectories and /q means don't ask me yes/no questions, just delete.

I tried both methods on a large directory. The del key method took 7 minutes whereas the right click/delete and dos del way took about 10 seconds (40 times faster!).

To speed Total Commander up, you can tell it to use the explorer method: Go to menu configuration >> options >> Copy/delete >> check "Use Explorer delete method" at the bottom. Now it is faster because it uses the native windows delete functionality. However, you loose some features like confirmation about whether you really want to delete read only files too (to which I almost always answer yes).

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