Deleting Windows folders...
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I have a 2TB SSD that was used to run Windows (on another machine), and Hyper-V...the machine it was hooked up to died months ago, but I did continue to use the SSD in an external USB dock to run the VMs. I have no use for the Windows installation on the drive; I'm not booting from it. So I tried to get rid of everything but the VMs. My god, is it ever an adventure to try to get rid of the existing Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData and Windows folders - even though Windows is NOT running from that disk. Taking ownership of folders, making sure the new ACL applies to child items (files *and* folders), deleting what you can, repeating for whatever Explorer refused to delete the first time around, etc. At this stage, it would've been faster to move the 1.7+ TB worth of VMs on it to another drive, reformat it, and copy the files back. If I was trying to delete folders owned by the OS that is currently running - obviously that's bound to fail. But the OS is on a *data* drive; it *ought* to be easy to take ownership of folders, and delete the whole thing. But nope. I've also been tempted to convert from NTFS to FAT32 (that *will* get rid of all folder permissions), and then back...but that would probably be even slower than moving the data I care about, reformatting, and recopying the files... Anyone's been down that road?
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Interesting problem. Googling I found the following. First response certainly seems informed. I didn't even know about the commands presented. https://superuser.com/questions/915173/delete-old-windows-program-files-from-second-drive[^]
Yup, I knew about both takeown and icacls (and its predecessor cacls), but there are some (deeply embedded) folders that still don't like to be reassigned. That response on superuser.com might be using a combination of command-line args that I haven't tried - thanks for that.
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I have a 2TB SSD that was used to run Windows (on another machine), and Hyper-V...the machine it was hooked up to died months ago, but I did continue to use the SSD in an external USB dock to run the VMs. I have no use for the Windows installation on the drive; I'm not booting from it. So I tried to get rid of everything but the VMs. My god, is it ever an adventure to try to get rid of the existing Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData and Windows folders - even though Windows is NOT running from that disk. Taking ownership of folders, making sure the new ACL applies to child items (files *and* folders), deleting what you can, repeating for whatever Explorer refused to delete the first time around, etc. At this stage, it would've been faster to move the 1.7+ TB worth of VMs on it to another drive, reformat it, and copy the files back. If I was trying to delete folders owned by the OS that is currently running - obviously that's bound to fail. But the OS is on a *data* drive; it *ought* to be easy to take ownership of folders, and delete the whole thing. But nope. I've also been tempted to convert from NTFS to FAT32 (that *will* get rid of all folder permissions), and then back...but that would probably be even slower than moving the data I care about, reformatting, and recopying the files... Anyone's been down that road?
Maybe SSD's are "small" so you don't keep anything except the OS on them. I'm in awe when a product lets me install on the drive I choose.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Maybe SSD's are "small" so you don't keep anything except the OS on them. I'm in awe when a product lets me install on the drive I choose.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Interesting problem. Googling I found the following. First response certainly seems informed. I didn't even know about the commands presented. https://superuser.com/questions/915173/delete-old-windows-program-files-from-second-drive[^]
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That's the way I'd do it - and probably a repartition to dump any bootable stuff as well.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
diskpart
list disk
select disk #
clean
gpt
exitSoftware Zen:
delete this; -
I have a 2TB SSD that was used to run Windows (on another machine), and Hyper-V...the machine it was hooked up to died months ago, but I did continue to use the SSD in an external USB dock to run the VMs. I have no use for the Windows installation on the drive; I'm not booting from it. So I tried to get rid of everything but the VMs. My god, is it ever an adventure to try to get rid of the existing Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData and Windows folders - even though Windows is NOT running from that disk. Taking ownership of folders, making sure the new ACL applies to child items (files *and* folders), deleting what you can, repeating for whatever Explorer refused to delete the first time around, etc. At this stage, it would've been faster to move the 1.7+ TB worth of VMs on it to another drive, reformat it, and copy the files back. If I was trying to delete folders owned by the OS that is currently running - obviously that's bound to fail. But the OS is on a *data* drive; it *ought* to be easy to take ownership of folders, and delete the whole thing. But nope. I've also been tempted to convert from NTFS to FAT32 (that *will* get rid of all folder permissions), and then back...but that would probably be even slower than moving the data I care about, reformatting, and recopying the files... Anyone's been down that road?
I too got tired of this problem and wrote a little cmd line tool for this.. GitHub - windojitsu/OwnAndResetAcl: Reclaim ownership and control of a directory tree.[^] OwnAndResetAcl A sanity-saving tool for dealing with those pesky "Windows.old" directories Reclaim ownership and control of a directory tree. Recursively takes ownership and resets the ACLs of files, directories and symbolic links. Does NOT follow reparse-points (symlinks or junctions). DOES reclaim ownership and restore access to symlinks and junctions. DOES support traversing/accessing long pathnames. DOES include hidden/system files and directories, and empty directories. DOES NOT modify timestamp or attributes of any files/directories. USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION: Everything in and under the target directory will be owned by the 'Builtin\Administrators' group, and have a DACL which explicitly grants Everyone full-control.
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I too got tired of this problem and wrote a little cmd line tool for this.. GitHub - windojitsu/OwnAndResetAcl: Reclaim ownership and control of a directory tree.[^] OwnAndResetAcl A sanity-saving tool for dealing with those pesky "Windows.old" directories Reclaim ownership and control of a directory tree. Recursively takes ownership and resets the ACLs of files, directories and symbolic links. Does NOT follow reparse-points (symlinks or junctions). DOES reclaim ownership and restore access to symlinks and junctions. DOES support traversing/accessing long pathnames. DOES include hidden/system files and directories, and empty directories. DOES NOT modify timestamp or attributes of any files/directories. USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION: Everything in and under the target directory will be owned by the 'Builtin\Administrators' group, and have a DACL which explicitly grants Everyone full-control.
Y'know...I had actually given some thought to writing a utility or script to do exactly this, but I figured it ought to get more complex than I might have anticipated from the get-go. Thank you *very* much for the link, I'll be sure to check it out as soon as time permits.
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Y'know...I had actually given some thought to writing a utility or script to do exactly this, but I figured it ought to get more complex than I might have anticipated from the get-go. Thank you *very* much for the link, I'll be sure to check it out as soon as time permits.
yeah there's a lot of advice out there "just run takeown.exe and icacls.exe" but at some point, Windows.old directory structures started containing pathnames > 260 chars, and directory symlinks that loop back on themselves.. it's maddening! further maddening, the .NET interop to call Advapi32 to enable necessary admin permissions, was extremely non-intuitive.. lots of old, bad code out there that works on x86 but not on x64 due to differences in struct-packing (member alignment) lmk if it helps or fails in any way.. haven't tested it on Win11, yet
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yeah there's a lot of advice out there "just run takeown.exe and icacls.exe" but at some point, Windows.old directory structures started containing pathnames > 260 chars, and directory symlinks that loop back on themselves.. it's maddening! further maddening, the .NET interop to call Advapi32 to enable necessary admin permissions, was extremely non-intuitive.. lots of old, bad code out there that works on x86 but not on x64 due to differences in struct-packing (member alignment) lmk if it helps or fails in any way.. haven't tested it on Win11, yet
Quick follow-up: I just had a quick look at the source - this is excellent stuff, my hat's off to you for putting this together. You can bet I'll be using it to clear off whatever remains on my drive. They say necessity is the mother of invention, so I think I know exactly what you went through to convince yourself to take the time to create this project. It's short(-ish), to-the-point, and despite the technical complexities involved, is very well structured and elegant code. How do I vote a 5 on GitHub? :-)
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Quick follow-up: I just had a quick look at the source - this is excellent stuff, my hat's off to you for putting this together. You can bet I'll be using it to clear off whatever remains on my drive. They say necessity is the mother of invention, so I think I know exactly what you went through to convince yourself to take the time to create this project. It's short(-ish), to-the-point, and despite the technical complexities involved, is very well structured and elegant code. How do I vote a 5 on GitHub? :-)
