What is the fastest delete method for many directory on Linux

Question

I have to remove many directory. but

rm -r /data

is so slow ( about some days) /data has

/data/a/b/c/d/e/f/g/h ....

many dirs

Does anyone know?

Answer 1

Removing huge amount of files and directories is a long operation, no matter what file system you have in use. Depending on your I/O subsystem and file system it might help performing the removal in parallel; just put one rm process removing directories starting with a-f, another one with g-n, and third one with o-z. Or something like that.

Or if it's OK for you to just have file removal going on background, you can always

mv data data_to_be_removed
mkdir data
rm -rf data_to_be_removed