I Tested Windows Delete vs Speed Delete. The Result Was Brutal

I ran a straight comparison: same folders, same machine. Windows Delete (Explorer) vs Speed Delete. The result was brutal for Explorer.

Test setup

• Folder 1: 12GB of old game files (mixed size, ~50k files)
• Folder 2: 8GB node_modules-style tree (many small files)
• Folder 3: 35GB single large files (archives)

Same NVMe SSD, no other heavy apps.

Windows Explorer

• Folder 1: "Calculating time remaining..." for several minutes, then slow progress. ~18 minutes total.
• Folder 2: Explorer struggled with the number of files. ~25 minutes, UI laggy.
• Folder 3: Faster than the others but still ~12 minutes (move/delete pipeline).

Speed Delete

• Folder 1: ~1 second
• Folder 2: ~4 seconds
• Folder 3: ~2 seconds

So we're looking at tens of minutes vs single-digit seconds on the same data.

Why the result was brutal

Explorer isn't built for bulk deletion. It:

1. Calculates total size and count before starting
2. Updates the UI constantly
3. Runs every file through shell extensions
4. Talks to the Recycle Bin or the same pipeline
5. Notifies the indexer

Speed Delete skips all of that. Direct filesystem calls, minimal UI, no shell, no Recycle Bin. So the same hardware does in seconds what Explorer does in minutes.

Long paths

I also had a deep node_modules path over 260 characters. Explorer errored. Speed Delete deleted it in about 10 seconds.

Takeaway

If you "test Windows Delete vs Speed Delete" on anything large or file-heavy, the result is brutal: Explorer loses by a huge margin. The free version of Speed Delete is enough to run your own test. I did—and I'm not going back.