Quick way to delete 240GB of files?

[feenster99]

Hi all,
I need to delete 240GB of data from a web server. I've tried the normal rm -rfv /dir/to/delete way, but it's taken a day to delete 1.5GB. The data is made up of loads of small files (< 40KB).

Is there a quicker way to delete them that doesn't involve formatting the partition?

Cheers,
Matt

 

[feenster99]

Yeah, it's EXT3. To complicate matters, it's a live web-server, so shutting it down isn't really an option. Do i just have to grin and bear it?

Matt

 

[feenster99]

They are a few hundred miles away unfortunately Plus, i'd probably get into a modicum of trouble.

I like your thinking though.

Matt

 

[feenster99]

I can only assume something else was happening on the server. After the initial really slow batch, i ran it again (simple rm -Rf /files) and it deleted much faster. Still took a while to delete ~230GB of data, but it wasn't anywhere near as slow.

Thanks for all the advice though.

Matt

 

[feenster99]

Well, point noted for the future