Warning: Deleting files from Search Results

H

HB13DISH

Retired Mod
My Location
Middle East - Israel
It is very convenient to do a search for a specific file type or file size on the whole hard disk (C:\ or D:\ or both) or any subfolder and then delete files that you don't want. (mouse right click > Search....)

I noticed that after deleting many files this way from D:\, I started to get hard disk checkup quite often, something that can make your heart lose a beat, so I stopped deleting files this way.
In the previous few days, I noticed that just doing a search is causing my PC to behave strangely for example it hangs.
It might be a memory problem off course, but I am not taking any chances.

Has anybody noticed this as well, or could this be only happening to my PC?
I have Windows XP Pro.
 
The D Drive is commonly used as a Recovery Partition, certainly for many PCs purchased in the UK - so you don't want to be messing with that at all unless you've burnt Recovery and Tools CDs (In which case the Partition can be completely removed anyway, to free up space on the Hard Disk Drive).

What is your own D Drive used for?
 
HB13DISH said:
The D:/ is an entirely separate HDD.
Click to expand...

Ah, ok.

I did wonder - not that it helps with your problem, sadly.
 
Are you storing software programs, on your D drive, or just files?
If deleting software you could be deleting shared .dll files, which could cause a problem.
If you are just deleting files then there shouldn't be a problem.
Run a full disk check to see that the hard drive isn't failing.
 
Of course the other thing to ensure is that your recycle bin does not get too full since the o/s still counts them as files until they are deleted from the recycle bin. Thus as you appear to be deleting from two drives, you may be reaching the limit in your bin, hence the reasons for the constant checking by the o/s
 
I always delete immediately the contents of the recycle bin.
All I am saying is to be careful with the search utility, especially deleting files from the search results, instead of from the explorer.
I will format the D:\ HDD when I have backed up it's content.
 
This is not something I've ever seen.

I cant see why deleting files in this way would cause problems with a hard disk, your probably coming accross an underlying problem.

Before you go ahead and format the drive, you could run a filesystem check. If its just a problem with few bad sectors, the scan will correct this by marking those sectors as damaged and the system wont try to read/write from/to them anymore.
 
Ive never seen anything like this either - and Ive been using computers for far too many years....
 
compufunk said:
This is not something I've ever seen.

I cant see why deleting files in this way would cause problems with a hard disk, your probably coming accross an underlying problem.

Before you go ahead and format the drive, you could run a filesystem check. If its just a problem with few bad sectors, the scan will correct this by marking those sectors as damaged and the system wont try to read/write from/to them anymore.
Click to expand...

I think that deleting many files this way from different subfolders in a very short time, might have caused the sectors to have a mechanical fatigue, but this is just a simple theory as I am not an expert.

I don't need to run a filesystem check, as this is done occasionally, and it always seem to look for the numerous deleted small files.
Formatting is not such a big deal. It's doing the backup that I am not happy with.
 
HB13DISH said:
I think that deleting many files this way from different subfolders in a very short time, might have caused the sectors to have a mechanical fatigue, but this is just a simple theory as I am not an expert.
Click to expand...
I can think of no reason for this.

With FAT32 and NTFS, when you delete a file, its actually not deleted at all. Only the reference to it in the file table is deleted. This means that the file is still there, the OS simply 'forgets' where it is.

The part of the disk where the deleted file lived is now marked as free space and will be over written when required.

What I'm getting at is, when you delete a file, the sector it was stored in is not touched at all. This would rule out mechanical fatigue due to deleting files.

HB13DISH said:
I don't need to run a filesystem check, as this is done occasionally, and it always seem to look for the numerous deleted small files.
Click to expand...
As far as I know the default scan does not try to recover bad sectors. A full scan of this sort takes about 2 hours on a 250Gb disk (I've just done one). So the regular check does not go to into the same depth as a full recovery scan.
 
2 potential answers

1)It may be that you are deleting from a drive that is rather full in the first place, in which case the process of dropping the useless files in the recycle bin isn't neat.

2) When deleting files I find it better to be disconnnected from the internet (physically disconnected, not just off-line), turn off the AV and firewalls, and any non essential MS stuff operating in the background.

A defrag is also much faster after carrying out 2).
 
Channel Hopper said:
2 potential answers

1)It may be that you are deleting from a drive that is rather full in the first place, in which case the process of dropping the useless files in the recycle bin isn't neat.

2) When deleting files I find it better to be disconnnected from the internet (physically disconnected, not just off-line), turn off the AV and firewalls, and any non essential MS stuff operating in the background.

A defrag is also much faster after carrying out 2).
Click to expand...

Thanks for trying to help, but:
1) The HDD was only 30% full.
2) This might be worth trying, especially when trying to do a major cleanup of the hard disk from all the files that I no longer need on my PC. In normal daily life, I delete files without going through this.
 
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