File system limits

[IRABYY]

Colleagues:

1. I know (from MS documentation), that in DOS there was the limit on the number of files in the root dir of the system disk (256, if I'm not mistaken).

2. I know by experience that there was limit on the number of files in any folder in Win98SE and earlier (20,000 + something).

3. I just ran quick test program which created 30,000 files on my WinME - no glitches, slowed down after 10,000 or so, but still ran through. (At the moment, I am running it with 40,000 files to create.)

And the question is: Are there any limits on the number of files in root or sub- directories for WinNT 4.0, 5.0 and/or WinXP, and is there something on this subject in the Microsoft's documentation on their OS?

We tried to find answer in on-line help, in MSDN on the web - found nothing.

The case at hands is that we are processing data for one customer: input is one (large) file, output is bunch of files (60,000...100,000 a-pop, 200+/- Kb each). We process them with output into subdirs (3,000 files each) to keep the speed of processing up. But customer have some stupid program for retrieving these files which cannot deal with subdirectories. They want us to cut them all on DVD, and we are not sure if it will work considering our previous unpleasant experience.

AHWBGA


Regards,

Ilya

 

[rgbean]

Ilya,
It really depends on the File System that the disk is using - FAT (aka FAT16), FAT32, HPFS, NTFS. I believe only FAT volumes are limited in the number of files in the root directory.

While it doesn't say what you want, I found this artile interesting -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;100108

- "Overview of FAT, HPFS, and NTFS File Systems".

Rick

 

[mkrausnick]

The 256 file limit for the root directory applies to all versions of Windows up through NT, but I'm not sure about 2K/XP. If I were you I would definitely assume that the limit DOES apply and put the files on the DVD in a subdirectory for compatibility.

You (or the user) should be able to map the DVD directory as another drive letter so the user's program doesn't see the directory.



Mike Krausnick
Dublin, California

 

[Steve Bowman]

SUBST is a DOS command

SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D

drive1: Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
[drive2:]path Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
a virtual drive.
/D Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.

Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

It would work but not clean like you are looking for.

Steve Bowman
steve.bowman@ultraex.com