Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!gatech!emory!platt From: platt@emory.uucp (Dan Platt) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Need help removing directory ! Keywords: RMDIR Message-ID: <3134@emory.uucp> Date: 17 Aug 88 01:54:49 GMT References: <1027@pc.ecn.purdue.edu> <980@dsacg3.UUCP> Reply-To: platt@emory.UUCP (Dan Platt) Organization: Emory University Lines: 30 In article <980@dsacg3.UUCP> nts0302@dsacg3.UUCP (Bob Fisher) writes: >Do you have any hidden files that might be keeping rmdir from working ? > >-- >Bob Fisher (osu-cis!dsacg1!bfisher) 614-238-9071 (Autovon 850-9071) I've encountered problems in removing directories under certain circumstances. What would happen would be that when I ran rmdirI'd get a complaint that the directory wasn't valid, or that the directory wasn't empty. A list of the contents of the directory revealed no files. I was able to delete the directory by doing a backup and restore of the disk. What I'd find in the directory would be a set of files called DELETED.xxx where xxx was a number. When I erased these files the directory could be removed. This problem only occured when the disk was almost full. I still don't know what mechanism caused the corruption. Perhaps it was due in part to a great deal of fragmentation of the disk. The painful exercize of backup/restore also produced the pleasant effect of a great deal of access speed up. I understand that there are disk-fixup utilities available which will do the task for you without the backup/restore pain (they are called disk optimizers). I haven't purchased one; I got a bigger disk instead (the old one was too small). You might consider getting one. I hope this is a help. Dan Platt