Deleteing a Large file off the system drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Adam Goss
  • Start date Start date
A

Adam Goss

I have a 1GB file that I need to delete off the C: drive
butr windows has been unable to do so. I've tried to
delete while logged into safe mode, but still no luck.
The file now says it is 0K but when ever I try to remove,
rename, access, or overwrite it the system hangs.

Does anyone know of a utility to allow me to remove this
file? The drive is formatted NTFS.

Thanks,
 
When you say "hang", does this mean that the system becomes
completely unresponsive, or just that the disk light goes on for
longer than you're willing to wait?

Since NTFS logs it's metadata changes and since the NTFS log
is of fixed size, when you encounter a file with many extents
(think a fragmented disk or a compressed file), NTFS will
deallocate the file in "chunks" and force a "checkpoint". This can
be slow if you have bijillions of extents.

If the file appears to be of zero length, but you have problems
trying to access it, I'd suggest running CHKDSK in safe mode
(or from the recovery disk) to clean stuff up.

I'd also be interested in seeing whatever CHKDSK might report
as a problem.
 
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