How can I remove a directory of many files quicker?

Question

How can I remove a directory of many files fast?

For example, I backup my hard drive on an external drive, and when I need to release the space occupied by some very old backup on the external drive, I want to release the space as soon as possible. rm -r /very/old/backup takes very long to finish running.

Thanks.

Is there a solution faster than rm -r /very/old/backup in the link you gave? Or am I missing something? — Tim, Nov 06 '17 at 04:48
rsync was the slowest of the three, rm being fastest and find second. — Jasen, Nov 06 '17 at 09:24
the best answer may be to change the way you do backups, rsync has some really useful features that can save both space and time. — Jasen, Nov 06 '17 at 09:26

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 06 '17 at 04:47

Technically, this depends on the filesystem and the structure that's been set up for it. But in the normal case of UFS/EXT, the system has to visit each individual file to release space. In the case where you have many small files, it can take quite a while to walk the directory to release space.

Because your usage is as a backup, you might consider changing the layout before you need the space back. One option is to take the directory (potentially with many small files) and tar or zip it up. This will take some time, but can be done any time after the backup. When you have the archive file in place, delete the directory. At the end of the process, you have a single file on the filesystem, and can still pull any data you need from it.

When it's time to remove, you can rm a single file, which will go much more quickly.

How can I remove a directory of many files quicker?

1 Answers1