Need to delete empty folders - is there a quick way?

[Damo77]

Hi all, I'm using Synctoy to backup ("echo") my PC to an external drive, and I love it.

My only whinge is that when I delete a folder from my computer, Synctoy removes all the files from that folder on the backup drive, but leaves the empty folder behind. Before too long, I have heaps of these empty folders littering the drive.

My question is, does anybody know of a quick way to find and delete these empty folders? At the moment I just have to hold my mouse over each folder to see what size it is, and if it says "0 bytes" I delete it. Slow and painful!

[OdiN1701]

Well I could write a VBA program to do it.

There is no option in the program to do it? No update/fix? Tried calling their support?

[Damo77]

Hmmm ... as far as I know I have the up-to-date version, but I'll check on that ...

[Damo77]

There was an update, and I've installed it, but the problem remains ...

[tim]

Stop looking at your backup drive... unless you're checking data's there or you've had a problem it doesn't matter if there are empty folders. Not a solution, just a practical and relatively polite way of telling you to stop obsessing over unimportant details ;)

[Damo77]

Ha ha! Unusually polite, I would say, by your standards! ;)

Perhaps you're right, but if, heaven forbid, I ever needed to restore all of my stuff from that disk because my computer had failed, it would be a messy process. I don't think my desire for drive cleanliness is unreasonable.

[OdiN1701]

Calling support would seem to be your only solution, other than a custom software solution or manually trudging away.

[tim]

Solution (http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=windows+delete+empty+folders) (first link).

[Damo77]

Huh ... I didn't see that one.

Thanks, it seems to work a treat!

[OdiN1701]

Google is nice also :p

Someone already made your custom software :)

Also saw an ingenious way to use a batch file and the DIR command...I wouldn't have thought of that one.

[ocabj]

Just write a script that traverses the directory structure to find folders with no contents and deletes them.

I'm sure you can do this in Windows scripting. If not, you could easily do it in bash, korn, tcsh, or some other Unix shell (download Cygwin for Win32 GNU environment). Better yet, just do it in Perl.