Comments for Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Comment from jarze on 2011-07-12

2011-07-12T15:08:36Z

That can't be right for FAT. I have a 2GB usb flash drive, it has folder which has over 25,000 files in total, and over 13,000 in its root. So the "maximum number of files in single folder" is not right. Well, at least when I look drive properties there stands FAT. If the numbers presented are right, seems more like my drive had FAT32...

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Bzh972 on 2011-03-24

2011-03-24T15:39:14Z

It seems that the max number of files per folder in fat32 depends on the size of the clusters.
In fat32, on my micro sdhc card, the max number of files within the root of a single folder is 21844.
And I found this: "under FAT 32 provided partition with 4-kB-Clusters permits "only" max.
21844 files per path"

Source: http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~naeser/oe.htm

Do you have more information about this phenomenon ? I didn't find any.

Thanks

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Code Master on 2010-11-28

2010-11-29T00:53:32Z

By the way, the limit to the number of files in a single directory is, if I'm remembering correctly, 2^4080, approx 1.5936e+1228 (in other words, you'd have to exhaust 255 characters of 16-bit unicode text in order to run out of space in a single directory).

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Pete B on 2010-07-06

2010-07-06T18:16:47Z

On a related matter, there are limits on the length of the full location of a file for some operations (I now forget which). So if you have a file which is

C:\folder A\subfolder B\very long subfolder name C\ ....\some long file name as well.docx

then there can be a limit of (128 or?) 256 characters for certain operations (like opening it in Word?). Very frustrating until you work out what the problem is. But some of the people commenting above may then hit this issue if they create lots of nested subfolders.

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Tim Hohs on 2010-04-13

2010-04-13T16:51:24Z

I'm obviously missing something here. I have several movies stored on my FAT32 external drive that are way over 4 Gb. How can that be if the limit is 4Gb?

If you mean DVDs or ripped DVDs you'll often find that the movie is stored as several separate files, none of which exceed 2 gigabytes. FAT cannot handle large files, so either you don't have FAT, or you don't have large files.

17-Apr-2010

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from comnut on 2010-01-20

2010-01-20T21:06:31Z

fat16 filesize limit is 2Gb, google "2gb limit" to verify....

a simple answer to 'folder size' here..
http://www.myhowtoos.com/en/windows-howtoos/91-how-to-display-folder-size-in-windows-explorer

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Rick on 2009-12-13

2009-12-13T22:23:46Z

To add more details, my file system is NTFS, and I have over 100 GB of free space on my hard drive.

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Rick on 2009-12-13

2009-12-13T22:17:43Z

There has to be some sort of size limit to folders. I have been copying DVD's to my laptops hard drive, and had about 8 Movies on my hard drive, and when I tried to copy another DVD's files over to that folder, I got a message that said something to the effect "There is not enough space in folder C:\...\....(... being the directory path), please make sure there is at least 4.2 Gb of free space. I thought it was a fluke and rebooted, and got the same message, but once I deleted one of the Movie folders, it then let me copy the files to that folder.
Any thoughts?

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Jaisin on 2009-10-06

2009-10-06T16:42:18Z

what is the max limit of single file that can be access from the share path.

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from mykeeX on 2009-09-25

2009-09-25T12:56:18Z

My question and problem is this.. I have all my mp3 files cataloged in one directory.. which is about 30GB on a 1TB SATA drive.
Im albe to play music just fine but if i wanted to open my directory where all my music is.. It takes like 5 mins to open..
I realize it has to read all the files before opening the directory..
So my question is this.. where is the fine line at.. how much can music or files can be store in one directory so it doesnt take you 20 years or longer to open?

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from sreejith on 2009-08-29

2009-08-29T14:44:14Z

Does any one here know about the maximum number of files in a single folder for ext2, ext2 FS of linux.
?

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Tb on 2009-07-13

2009-07-13T23:51:37Z

Can you share resources for learning more about the optimal way to store files in a web application? We currently put all files into the main directory, and this is creating some issues with copying and we think backups. One folder has over 185,000 files, all of which are fairly small. The copy rate is about 6 gig/hour on a LAN.

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from OP on 2009-02-16

2009-02-16T14:27:23Z

Is it possible to put 1-2 thousand files in a folder in windows 2003 server and share it so that other users (more than 200) can directly execute exes from it. Or its a better idea to divide those files into sub folders inside the main folder. Thanks in advance.

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Dwarner on 2008-12-08

2008-12-08T21:53:52Z

I am creating an archive. Currently we are putting all of our files in one folder and have accumulated over 6,000 files. Is there a utility or piece of software that might have an inbox and place the files in automatically created directories with a maximum of 500 files to improve access performance.

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Ansy on 2008-07-24

2008-07-24T16:13:20Z

Cracking site and I've been trying to find out why I can only store a few Divx files in a folder before its full. No I know why and how to fix it. Cheers

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Emidio on 2008-03-17

2008-03-17T17:12:37Z

Hi! Actually I'm keeping incurring in a folder size limit of 102 GB. I have several external drives, all of them NTFS, and there is no way to store more than 102 GB in a single folder. Any suggestion?
Thanks

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-05-19

2007-05-20T02:43:32Z

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Yes. Look into the "Convert" command. It's a commandline tool that will convert
a drive from FAT to NTFS. It's included with Windows XP.

Leo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFGT7XBCMEe9B/8oqERAvnVAJ9CSZsW4wgjI6DKMkhKFigFUGkhAwCcDg42
SslIOJQtTkR8/bpxSZRKBG0=
=F57s
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Chris Ottaway on 2007-05-19

2007-05-19T10:15:30Z

I back up to an external hard drive. I can only back up 4 gb in one folder. I think it could be formatted with Fat32. Is their a way to reformat this drive to NTFS?

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-05-14

2007-05-14T21:02:05Z

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Thanks, fixed the spelling.

Yeah, I consciously decided to avoid tebi for the very reason you mention. It
might be more accurate, but if no one knows what it means, does it really help?

(Yes, I also realize that actually using it would help further spread knowledge
of the word. I'll just claim that's happening here in the comments.)

:-)

Leo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFGSM5cCMEe9B/8oqERAonUAKCIgkWhc1lUlSa8fdkufWv2xxXIuwCfTO2X
t5tSbaEeqScyb30w/8Vm35Q=
=P8YB
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.

Comment from Simon on 2007-05-14

2007-05-14T16:44:09Z

Good article.

Nitpick: your use of "terrabytes": the prefix is actually 'tera', only one r; from the Greek ????? meaning four (since a terathing is 1000^4 things).

(Of course, if I was being *really* nitpicky, you technically want 'tebi' (2^40) rather than 'tera' (10^12); but since few people know what 'tebi' means and the difference is less than 10% I'll let you off there ;) ).

]]>

A comment on: Is there a limit to what a single folder or directory can hold?

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter - Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.