Whirlpool

Hi,
Anyone knows what is the maximum number of files allowed in windows Xp (prof) NTFS in one flat directory?
I currently have a directory with 51168 File(s) in 280,089,065 bytes.
Reason I ask is the performance of explorer when navigating to this directory is poor.
I tried defragging but it did not help.
Thanx

what type of files are they?
Are they being viewed in Thumbnail form?
I have mine set as "List View" by default ..

To do this, put any directory in List View, View > List
And to set that as default, Tools > Folder Options > View tab > then click "Apply to all Folders" which will set all folders on your system to default the way your currently viewing it..

Edit:
But yea.. thats alot of files to load up at once..
If list view doesnt help i would try to break it up into folders, categorize them or something

Copernicus writes...

Anyone knows what is the maximum number of files allowed in windows Xp (prof) NTFS in one flat directory?

A search of M$ reveals nothing.

I currently have a directory with 51168 File(s)

thats a lot of files.

performance of explorer is poor

I hope you are not complaining? :-)

Copernicus writes...

Anyone knows what is the maximum number of files allowed in windows Xp (prof) NTFS in one flat directory?

AFAIK it is unlimited.

I currently have a directory with 51168 File(s) in 280,089,065 bytes.
Reason I ask is the performance of explorer when navigating to this directory is poor.

What did you expect? Instantaneous response with 51K files?

Turn off indexing if it is on.

Copernicus writes...

Anyone knows what is the maximum number of files allowed in windows Xp (prof) NTFS in one flat directory?

From memory, 65, 535 files in any single directory.

Edit: That's for FAT32. NTFS allows up to 4.29 billion files on the volume.
www.microsoft.com/resour...rkc_fil_tdrn.asp

Copernicus writes...

performance of explorer when navigating to this directory is poor.

I guess this is the time to start categorizing, if you have the many files.

who carez writes...

I guess this is the time to start categorizing, if you have the many files.

I agree, that's just too many files to read every time it refreshes the directory.
It would be even worse if you had long file names as this requires additional disk accesses.

IIRC it is 512 files in the root directory, but some silly large number in the other directories.

personally, over 20,000 has a noticable effect to me.

defrag can help, but the next step as a short term measure is to move the files into a new directory, this will force a clean recreation of the directory structure and give a faster refresh. this is most usefull when there are a large number of files created and deleted in that directory.

personally, I try to keep the count below 2000, turn off window's "preview" mode, turn of indexing (in windows services and also the program I use to access the directory) and finally, disable virus scanners (if possible) when using that directry.

the long term fix is to sort them out.

edit: spelling

ps - the new directoyr should not be a sub directory as the same problem will still exist. it needs to be on the same level as the one you are replacing ideally.

Thank you for your comments , I was worried there was ceiling at ~65k files.
Btw, these files are small gifs, pngs or jpegs. I have mysql db setup where each record contains a field with a link to each of these as located on local disk.
Maybe I should consider moving them into db.
Since NTFS has a very large limits I dont have do it just yet.
Thanks!

greenhawk writes...

turn off window's "preview" mode, turn of indexing (in windows services and also the program I use to access the directory)

This is most likely your answer for slow Explorer, perform the steps suggested by greenhawk and you should notice a marked difference.