Software to delete files at Random

[zaidgs]

I know my request my seems odd, but I need a software that deletes files from a folder (and subfolders) randomly to satisfy certain conditions. For example, I want to specify a large folder and request that it deletes files at random until the size of that folder is, say, 200 MBs.

Does anyone know of an utility that does this kind of stuff? And if someone needs to ask, I want to use this utility on large picture galleries (jpg's) to reduce Hard-drive usage.

[dancsi]

Well, you can always write a quick-n-dirty program in some of the .NET languages, or I guess that there is a way to do it with a powershell script

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Why delete them at random? Why not just start at the oldest pics, put the ones that you really really want to keep on a CD/DVD and then delete the rest? I can understand the mentality of "but when I see them I'll want to keep all of them" but ultimately you just need to man up like I do with films, music and pictures and say, "once these are gone, a week from now I won't remember what they were."

At least this way you'd be sure that nothing gets accidentally deleted by a random deletion.

However, to answer your question, I don't think such a program exists. Try looking in to contracting a virus though, I hear some of them are quite good at deleting files randomly...

[zaidgs]

  On 06/10/2010 at 09:58, dancsi said:

Well, you can always write a quick-n-dirty program in some of the .NET languages, or I guess that there is a way to do it with a powershell script

Yeah, I might end up doing that... Just thought there might be a good general purpose utility for this kind of task.

[+BudMan MVC]

Deleting pictures at "random" is not really the correct answer. Come on you have to be kidding, that's the solution you come up with??

Here are better solutions.

Delete/Archive the pictures you do not need! Continue to justify deletion/archival based upon some criteria that ranks importance of the images that should be maintained in the gallery until goal of storage space used is obtained.

Reduce the file size of the images to fit all of them in the space you have, be it either through reduction in pixels x pixels size or since jpg by quality of the image.

Get more space to allow for current images at current size and quality, better yet increase size to allow for growth. (BEST Solution)

Some combination of all of the above.

Delete at random?? That's just plan insane!