Need help 3.7 million files

[tential]

I'm not even sure what to title this but I'll give the break down.
Windows Media player stores album art. I did not know this, and 3.7 MILLION jpegs have been made. More are made all the time. In fact I cleared up 50 gigs of hard drive space and I've already lost 10. I desperately need help in figuring out how to delete these files.

They are stored in appdata\local\microsoft\media player\art cache\localmls folder. However, because there are 3.7 million files I can't open the folder or my computer will just hang.

PLEASE help this is hell.I only finally just figured out what was wrong after trying to run adaware,, and a defrag and it was taking so damn long and then I realized it was stuck on that folder. Googling lead me to find out the problem but I can't solve it because mine is so damn big.

Thanks for you rtime guys!

 

[Joepublic2]

Disable this service it seems to cause more problems with wmp... http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-t...edia-player-network-sharing-service-wmpnetwk/

Then try "del /f/s/q/a:H LocalMLS > nul" in the "art cache" directory from a command prompt? Still going to take a long time, might be a better way.

 

[tential]

My computer just freezes so what else can I do?

 

[tential]

Nvm its makinsome progress. Its found 8 files so far, keeps hanging, and the command line to delete the folder is still running. Should I just wait or is there a quicker way?

 

[Gunbuster]

Windows is not so good about file system operations involving a lot of small files. Give it some time. If the drive is slow or connected via USB drive give it a lot of time...

 

[tential]

12 files in so ya I'm going to have to give it a LONG time...

 

[tential]

So I downloaded Fast Copy and told it to delete files in that folder. FINALLY, I am seeing progress. However, Fast copy is deleting files at .2 files a second. 3 million files to delete, .2 files a second, it will take approximately 174 days to finish. Surely there is a better way than this?

 

[Gunbuster]

Maybe try booting from a Live DVD/USB OS and do the delete from there.

 

[tential]

I turned my computer on from the recovery drive which is labeled X I think or something like that. Anyway, I had the option to restore my pc from backup, repair startup, memory diagnostic, and command line prompt. I opened that up, tried to delete the files from that but still, I don't even know if it's doing anything. Leaving it for an hour or two doesn't let me know. There is no progress or nothing. Using the dir function on the folder won't list files either. It just sits there, I can't type but I can scroll up and down. I dunno what to do the only thing that shows progress is fastcopy, and that's now moving at .10 files a second so it will take 1 full year and then some to delete all the files.

Also, odd thing is when I was defragmenting the drive, I never finished but I had like 700k defragmented files and got it down to 450k. It was taking only 1 second to move the file when defragmenting but when deleting it takes .1 seconds? Will deleting the files go faster if I just defragment the drive first? Only way I defragment by the way is using O&O defrag so I can see how long I have. Vista sucks for defragmenting.

 

[tential]

Disable this service it seems to cause more problems with wmp... http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-t...edia-player-network-sharing-service-wmpnetwk/

Then try "del /f/s/q/a:H LocalMLS > nul" in the "art cache" directory from a command prompt? Still going to take a long time, might be a better way.

how do I do I know if it's making progress?

 

[zuffy]

Use Robocopy in the Command Prompt.

Create a new folder that is empty in the C drive. Call it temp if you want.

then execute:

robocopy /mir /r:0 /w:0 /mt:32 c: \temp c: \users\xxxxx\appdata\local\microsoft\media player\art cache\localmls

(replace the xxxxx with the correct name of the user. excuse the space after : because a smilie would show up)

 

[tential]

Also another question, shouldn't it theoretically get faster as more files are gone and it's easier for the system to manage?

How will that be any different using robocopy? Please explain sorry if I'm a little dumb lol.

 

[zuffy]

The robocopy with the mt switch tells it to copy in 32 threads. That should help delete faster than a single thread del command.

 

[tential]

If it's deleting why do I need a destination folder? Sorry for the dumb questions again lol but I get it.
And should it be C:\ or C :\(second one with a space)

 

[ilisidi]

It should be the first C. C:\ which does the annoying smiley. C : \ no spaces.

 

[tential]

Still confused as to how robocopy telling it to copy to a temp folder will delete the files?
Further update, I don't have windows 7 and a google search told me I need windows 7 to use the multithreaded feature

 

[zuffy]

you can download the robocopy utility from resource kit. You will loose the mt switch but will still work great.

The mir switch tells it to mirror the source to the destination. Since temp is empty, when it sync, it will mirror temp to your destination, eventually purging all the files/folders to mirror the temp folder which is the source.

 

[tential]

Ah I see. Well, don't I already not have the MT switch anyway so it's nothing to lose since I don't have Windows 7? According to wikipedia, I can't use MT unless it's Windows 7.
Also, guessing I need quotations as Robocopy flipped out on me when I tried.

 

[tential]

It says Started: Wed Mar 07 22:27:27
Source: C:\temp\
Dest: c: \users\Gateway\appdata\local\microsoft\media player\art cache\localmls
Files: *.*
Options /S /E /Copyat /Purge /MIR /R:0 /W:0

RoboCopy's current Memory used is 6,000k and growing. Is this a good thing? It's exe usage is still low.

Damn I wish I had the MT option in Vista .

Does this mean it's working?

Thanks for your time!

 

[tential]

I ran robocopy for a little, i gained a little bit of HD space, then lost it again, then went to Fastcopy again and now it's going at 20 files a second! YAY! At this rate it will only take 2 days tops. Going to not touch my computer at all now and let it run! Thank god!

 

[ilisidi]

Good luck! As soon as you can, get that option turned off in WMP!

 

[imagoon]

Crossposting doesn't help you much:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2230973

 

[tential]

Crossposting doesn't help you much:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2230973

Posted the first one in OS help before I saw the Computer help section. Thanks though for your insightful post it helped me a lot as I clearly needed help on crossposting.

However, my file rate has increased to 28.08 files a second and I don't think it'll go any faster. It'll be done within 24 hours so I'm really happy. I still dunno what triggered FastCopy to increase the rate from .21 to 28 files magically but whatever!

I think I figured out how to share files without it adding files to the Art Cache but I'll be very wary. I use WMP's file sharing option all the time so turning it off isn't an option for me long term but I think if you turn off the access internet options or something like that for album art it stops downloading it. Kind of annoying that this happened since I only share videos and don't even use WMP for music that often and my library is definitely not stored there.

One odd thing though, it's deleted 6200 megabytes gigs of stuff, but I've gained almost 16 gigs back? Just curious as to why this may be lol but thanks for all the help!

 

[imagoon]

Posted the first one in OS help before I saw the Computer help section. Thanks though for your insightful post it helped me a lot as I clearly needed help on crossposting.

However, my file rate has increased to 28.08 files a second and I don't think it'll go any faster. It'll be done within 24 hours so I'm really happy. I still dunno what triggered FastCopy to increase the rate from .21 to 28 files magically but whatever!

I think I figured out how to share files without it adding files to the Art Cache but I'll be very wary. I use WMP's file sharing option all the time so turning it off isn't an option for me long term but I think if you turn off the access internet options or something like that for album art it stops downloading it. Kind of annoying that this happened since I only share videos and don't even use WMP for music that often and my library is definitely not stored there.

One odd thing though, it's deleted 6200 megabytes gigs of stuff, but I've gained almost 16 gigs back? Just curious as to why this may be lol but thanks for all the help!

Sector/cluster size on the file system. NTFS defaults to 4k so a 7k file = 2 sectors and 8k used. The "Size on disk" is 8k, file is 7k. This is called "slack space" Take 1k (example only) and multiply by your 3.7million files: 3,700,000k of slack or right around 3.5gig. WMP uses more than jpgs, it uses some xml files and some other junk for the album covers so the slack space might be more. IE the 500byte xml might have as much as 3.5kb of slack.

Also after you delete all this stuff, it is quite likely the NTFS MFT will be very bloated.

 

[tential]

These are all jpg files, but each one is extremely small so that probably explains it. When it was going really slow it took a ton of files to delete just to get 1 MB of space back. Thanks that explains a lot. Now I understand the difference of why it would say something would be so and so MBs big but take up more size on the disk.

What's the NTFS MFT?

Also, would disk defragmentation speed up the file deletion? It takes much less time for me to defragment for some reason than to delete the files, dunno why.