GHalleck said:
Two million files is a large number of files, far beyond what might
be considered reasonable in any computer. And, believe me, there is
no one who is going to take up the offer other than to re-format the
hard drive and install a clean copy of Windows. That is, start from
scratch. Hopefully, there isn't going to be a repetition of what had
occurred to accumulate this number of files in the first place.
And all of us were beginners at one time. And we all learned by
ourselves and amongst ourselves, and through trial and error. That
is the only way. There is only so much dumbing-down that is possible.
Some problems are tougher to solve than others. Storage problems are
the hardest, because of the danger you might suggest something that
causes data loss for the person asking.
Some problems cannot be practically solved over the Internet, because
of the limits of what can be described in text postings in a reasonable
period of time. Basically, you are trying to do remote viewing, using
a person at the other end to notice things (or not).
Everyone will have their own methods for attacking the problem. Maybe
there is a magic "deleting" program out there, that will solve your
problem. I've worked on other operating systems, and you can get in
situations where there are too many files in a folder, and all the
application level tools barf if they get one sniff of the folder.
That makes the problem more of a challenge, because you lose the
convenience of a GUI based tool.
Perhaps scripting is the answer. I've used scripting in Unix many times,
to clean up messes. Basically, as long as the computer can create a
list of all the files, you can put a command before the file name.
Like "Delete fred123.txt". The script executes, and some hours later,
the mess is gone. Windows has scripting, but I've never used
it.
I have another imaginative solution. Do a backup with a tool like Retrospect,
format the disk, then do a restore back onto the disk. During the backup
phase, Retrospect has the ability to exclude portions of the disk from
the backup. Thus, if a certain temp directory has 1,900,000 of your
2,000,000 files, you'd be setting up the backup to only store 100,000
files, and not touch the other 1,900,000 you don't want. But Retrospect
traditionally has been considered to have a "learning curve", by its
users, so the tool is not without its challenges. It means you have to
be willing to read the manual, look at screens, and experiment a bit.
(Single disk backup is particularly easy, and it is the multi disk and
multi computer backup that is hard. The manual is 390 pages, but you'll
still need to skim through it, to see what features are available. I've
spent a couple of days trying to get automated backups working properly.)
When I set up Retrospect for a relative, I wrote something like 12 pages
of hand written instructions, as to what to do. (Including how to burn
the Disaster Recovery CD in Nero.)
The manual for Retrospect is here. Doing an immediate backup, in
"Advanced mode", should allow Previewing the files to be backed up.
See page 62 for mention of this. You would then carefully "untick"
all the stuff you want ignored. Remember to leave the empty folder
as an item to back up, so it is there when Windows is restored.
(Windows would probably put it back, but I wouldn't take chances.)
http://www.emcinsignia.com/assets/en_rug_win75.pdf
Other things to select, would be to "verify" after the backup is
complete. That compares the backup made, against the source, and
doubles the completion time. You can leave compression disabled, as
your destination disk is big enough to hold the whole thing.
As part of the process, you'd be creating a "Disaster Recovery" CD.
That CD is how you'd be booting the computer. When the CD boots,
you use the CD to format the original C drive and wipe it out.
Retrospect would then restore the file set you backed up to your
big disk. Since the troublesome contents of the "Temp" directory,
where ever it is, are now gone, the restored size should be a lot
smaller. What you've done is a file-by-file backup, so only the
stuff in the backup list, is going to be restored by the Disaster
Recovery process.
The following animated GIF, shows what the screen in the computer
looks like during the restore operation. This is what happens
when you boot from the Disaster Recovery CD, and at this time
your external drive is connected, as it has the image to be
restored to the boot drive.
http://kb.dantz.com/al/12/1/9524_files/image001.gif
The Retrospect trial lasts for 30 days, which should be enough to
finish this task.
In using Retrospect, the most trouble I had was getting the damn
CDs to burn properly. I'm all thumbs when it comes to getting
burners to work right. I've used Nero for the job, and recommend
scanning all media created by a burn, to make sure it has a low
error rate. (Nero has a tool for testing the CD, and shows a plot
of the error rate.) The version of Retrospect I used, prepared an ISO,
and that is what you'd be burning to a CD. The Disaster Recovery
CD is purely for booting, and the backup files are still on your
external drive. The backed up files are stored in a big image
file created on your external disk.
"Why is my Disaster Recovery ISO file too big for the CD?"
http://kb.dantz.com/al/12/1/5989.html
I don't expect your catalog file will be that big, since you
aren't going to be backing up the temp files.
There are other backup tools, but I don't know if they are
capable of handling 2 million files or not.
Paul
