How many files can XP folders hold?

[Dennis Q. Wilson]

Just curious as to what's the maximum number of files that a given
folder can hold in Windows XP. A colleague of mine recently left a
newsgroup reader on for several days while on vacation, and when he
came back, the download folder had over 16,000 messages in it, and
Windows wouldn't let him add any more until he deleted some. (Disk
space wasn't the issue -- he had over 100 GB free.)

 

[FrankV]

The download goes to one file so it has nothing to do with maximum number of
files. I don't think there is a specific maximum size for this one file. It
depends upon the size of each message and hidden control information for
each message. Right click on a message subject then properties and details.
You see the source data with all the controls in front before you see the
actual message.

Frank

 

[Poprivet]

Just curious as to what's the maximum number of files that a given
folder can hold in Windows XP. A colleague of mine recently left a
newsgroup reader on for several days while on vacation, and when he
came back, the download folder had over 16,000 messages in it, and
Windows wouldn't let him add any more until he deleted some. (Disk
space wasn't the issue -- he had over 100 GB free.)

There's a lot more to it than disk space; perhaps someone will pop in with
good resource info for you; I dont' have it.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Just curious as to what's the maximum number of files that a given
folder can hold in Windows XP.

It depends on the file system. A directory in FAT32 can contain 65,536
entries. A file or subdirectory can take from 2 to 13 entries, so the
directory can fill surprisingly quickly.

There's no limit on how many files and subdirectories can be in an
NTFS directory. But there is a limit on files per volume:
4,294,967,295 (see
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/core/fncc_fil_tvjq.mspx?mfr=true)

A colleague of mine recently left a
newsgroup reader on for several days while on vacation, and when he
came back, the download folder had over 16,000 messages in it, and
Windows wouldn't let him add any more until he deleted some. (Disk
space wasn't the issue -- he had over 100 GB free.)

What newsreader what this, and how are the messages stored? He might
have bumped into the entries-per-directory limit on a FAT32 volume, or
the max file size in FAT32 (4GB), or a lower limit on file size
imposed by the program.

 

[Dennis Q. Wilson]

The download goes to one file so it has nothing to do with maximum number of
files. I don't think there is a specific maximum size for this one file. It
depends upon the size of each message and hidden control information for
each message. Right click on a message subject then properties and details.
You see the source data with all the controls in front before you see the
actual message.

Frank

The news reader wasn't Outlook, but Xnews (if I recall correctly), and
there was in fact one file generated for every downloaded message.in
fact

 

[Dennis Q. Wilson]

It depends on the file system. A directory in FAT32 can contain 65,536
entries. A file or subdirectory can take from 2 to 13 entries, so the
directory can fill surprisingly quickly.

There's no limit on how many files and subdirectories can be in an
NTFS directory. But there is a limit on files per volume:
4,294,967,295 (seehttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/c...)


What newsreader what this, and how are the messages stored? He might
have bumped into the entries-per-directory limit on a FAT32 volume, or
the max file size in FAT32 (4GB), or a lower limit on file size
imposed by the program.

Yeah, that's my guess, that it was some sort of entries-per-directory
limit on his FAT32 drive. The news reader he uses is NewsBin Pro, not
Xnews like I earlier guessed, and messages are stored one per file.
He was downloading a lot of old magazine and newspaper pages (one JPG
file per page, at about 200 KB per file), and it wouldn't let him
continue after he'd downloaded about 16,000 of them.

 

[Chris F Clark]

Yeah, that's my guess, that it was some sort of entries-per-directory
limit on his FAT32 drive. The news reader he uses is NewsBin Pro, not
Xnews like I earlier guessed, and messages are stored one per file.
He was downloading a lot of old magazine and newspaper pages (one JPG
file per page, at about 200 KB per file), and it wouldn't let him
continue after he'd downloaded about 16,000 of them.

And 16384 is 1/4th 65536, somewhat plausible....