I have also had problems deleting large amounts of data from S3. The problem that underlies the problem the author was having is that S3 is quite slow and you

I have also had problems deleting large amounts of data from S3. The problem that underlies the problem the author was having is that S3 is quite slow and you can't do batch deletes. On top of that, they limit the number of API requests you can make per second. In some case it has been faster to download an object and re-upload it again than do a copy.