Why is erasing files in a virtual machine so slow?

Question

I'm erasing tens of thousands of small files in a VMWare Workstation 7, and it's taking HOURS.

I can't figure why this is so, as the computer is very high speced, and the VM runs on an SSD.

Any ideas?

Details:

Host has two SSDs - one for the OS (Windows 7) and one for the SSD.

Erasing the files is done using Total Commander: selecting, feeding into a list box and then deleting.

Windows XP as guest operating system. The guest shows 100% CPU Usage and a 341M out of 2.5G commit charge.

The virtual machine is located on the Host's SSD D:, separate from the C: SSD containing the host's Windows 7 Ultimate. The host is barely sweating, with 12% CPU Usage and 37% of its 24GB memory (it's running two more virtual machines, but they are on the third (hard) disk, not on either of the SSDs).

The Resource Monitor running on the host shows the guest has 916,000 B/Sec disk writes.

Clearing the guest's Recycle Bin appears to momentarily speed up the deletion tremendeoulsy.

The SSDs have a 100 MB/s write throughput.

Why is it so slow?

Answer 1

If you're deleting more than the recycle bin can hold the first items are added to the bin until it's full, then for each additional item the bin is scanned and the oldest item is removed. This scan, remove, add, scan, remove, add, ect... process takes forever.

Hold down SHIFT when selecting delete (in windows explorer) to avoid the recycle bin entirely.