file count limit and minimum available disk space 2

[VBRookie]

Hi,

I have two brief questions:

1. Is there a 'best practice' for folder file counts? For example is it best to have many small directories that only contain about 300 - 500 files each or is it perfectly ok to have directories containing 5000 or more files?

2. What do you recommend as the least amount of available disk space that an XP system should have to run optimally?

Many Thanks,
- VB Rookie

 

[trojanman]

1. I dont think its possible to regulate how many files are in a folder. Disk quotas can be used to limit the size of usable disk space.

2. In my opinion, anything less than 500mb and youre looking for trouble.

 

[ncotton]

1. I think the maximum files in one folder is c33,000
2. What Trojan said....I say 700mb though.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[maxthedork]

I recovered a ton of files once using FindMyFiles (over 10,000) and it dumped them all into a folder called RECOVER in my My Documents folder. After that, until I went through it and cleaned everything out, the My Documents folder took about 10-15 seconds just to open. So I would say that having an inordinate number of files in one folder does in fact adversely affect the system. It did in my case.

 

[VBRookie]

Thanks this is the information that I needed. I'm writing an app that writes documents to a folder and I figured that I'd better put a limit on the number of docs that go into one folder ...

This was very helpful.

Many Grateful Thankyous,
- VB Rookie

 

[trojanman]

When I first started learning vb6, I created a program that auto-generated text files in a folder whenever the users moved their mouse. I think it got up to 65,536 and crashed.

 

[maxthedork]

trojanman, sounds like a fun app (-:

 

[InZ]

I currently have a folder which has 179,489 files in it & is still growing, true that it takes awhile for it to open & to show all the files however.

 

[ncotton]

sorry, my post had a 0 missing, i meant 330,000

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[LWComputingMVP]

Depends on your file system:

FAT32 maximum files per folder, using 8.3 naming conventions, is a little over 65,000. On an NTFS volume, maximum files per disk is 4 billion (don't think there is a limit per folder.

I try not to put TOO many files in a folder as organization tends to make things easier - and explorer has issues when listing that many files (basically, it can take a long time).

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/27253/27253.html?Ad=1

As for minimum space... I've had 2000 and NT systems drop to a couple hundred MB, but ideally, I'd say keep at least a gig... just to be safe. In theory, you won't have a problem until you actually run out of space.

 

[ncotton]

It also depends on your setup. If you have all documents, and temp working docs saved to a network profile, then probably 300mb will survice.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[mphayesuk]

Hi everyone I know this post is a bit old but just to add to the pot. I am currently converting some data. The data is held in a web page ie you put your search in the web page and then it brings back results in the form of another web page, all held on a cd, so you dont need the internet. So what I did to get rounf it is change the original web page and save it as something else and then when you run this web page it loops to ask for all the results, these results are stored in one folder.

So what I am getting to is that the files stop appearing after 65000.

So on a windows xp pro sp2 with ntfs the max number of files in one folder is 65000.

 

[LWComputingMVP]

Try other utilities. Do DIR from a command line.

 

[gbaughma]

2. What do you recommend as the least amount of available disk space that an XP system should have to run optimally?

According to microsoft's site, 1.5GB is the minimum requirement for an XP Pro installation.

They also say it will run on 128MB of RAM... but don't you believe it. Unless you want it to emulate the boot speed of Windows 98 on a Pentium 1. ;-)

My system at home is 1GB RAM and 60GB OS Partition. Keeping in mind that windows updates and so forth eat up hard drive space; the swapfile eats up space; installed applications eat up space.

Just because software comes on a CDRom (such as XP), don't assume that all the space it's going to take is 640MB. Files are compressed, swap files created, etc. etc. etc.

If you want your system to run "optimally", do what I did... get a large hard drive (I have a 160GB), partition it (60GB OS, 100GB applications/data). This way, the FAT table won't be HUGE for your operating system, and if the OS crashes and needs to be re-installed, your data is still safe on the other partition.



Just my 2¢

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