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Nathan Ridley
Asked: 2011-12-29 04:55:05 +0800 CST

Folder with a million files - how to use Powershell to limit the returned file list to a maximum number of files and avoid the hours-long wait?

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I have a directory that inadvertently had about 1.4 million files generated into it. I want to list just the first, say, 100 items, but without the underlying process trying to read the entire directory contents internally, which causes a very long wait which, at this stage, has been processing for nearly an hour.

How do I do this with Powershell?

powershell windows-7

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Want the first hundred items in a directory?

    @(dir)[1..100]

    Only want files?

    @(dir -File)[1..100]

    Want to skip the first 40 directories and get the next 200?

    @(dir -Directory)[41..240]
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