23
5
How many files can a windows folder contain?
This question is asked here but then the question text pollutes the question with issues of "rules of thumb"
So to be clear, this question is: How many files can a windows folder contain?
23
5
How many files can a windows folder contain?
This question is asked here but then the question text pollutes the question with issues of "rules of thumb"
So to be clear, this question is: How many files can a windows folder contain?
32
FAT
FAT32
NTFS
(from here)
EDIT: I removed some of the additional information because it was a resulting in down votes and not really necessary to answer the question. Thanks @Richard for the constructive feedback below.
Really not sure about those numbers. FAT (all types) has always had a fairly small limit for root folders (with long file names using multiple limits), but non-root folders could keep growing (linear search means opening a file is going to get much slower with large numbers of files). – Richard – 2009-07-31T10:01:58.810
NTFS does have a file size limit. The NTFS format limits it to 2^64 bytes, but actual driver implementation limit is significantly less (2^48 bytes IIRC). – Richard – 2009-07-31T10:02:49.493
UPDATE: Correct data for NTFS: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781134%28WS.10%29.aspx
– Richard – 2009-07-31T10:05:31.860UPDATE: Correct data for FAT: file/partition size: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463 and folder entries: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/120138
– Richard – 2009-07-31T10:08:55.050Any info on if/how performance degrades once one has more than a few thousand files? – Thilo – 2009-09-02T02:26:04.273
@Thilo I don't have any concrete numbers on performance. But i am sure it would depend largely on what precisely it is you are trying to do. Getting a file listing will take much proportionatly longer than say opening a specific file, but I am sure that both would take a hit as the file numbers increase. I unfortunately can't (not without a whole bunch of homework) say how big that hit would be. – Ron Tuffin – 2009-09-02T14:15:56.573
@Thilo - I have about 1,000,000 files (plus all the files in the Windows folder that aren't being backed up) on my computer. I don't see a significant or noticeable drive performance change. As Ron suggested, a full directory listing, or searching for a file if I don't have a known path to start from (in other words, searching from the drive root) can take a while, but normal file access is typically as fast as I'd imagine it could be. Depends on what's going on. If backup (to cloud) software is running, and I'm recording a movie (Media Center), it can occasionally get bogged down momentarily. – Kevin Fegan – 2012-11-28T09:50:21.843
Related: http://superuser.com/questions/6382/how-many-files-can-you-put-in-a-windows-folder
– JYelton – 2011-03-21T17:37:37.957