My Documents folder size question

[Harrison]

Someone referred me to a web page with tips on "basic system
maintenance" information.

Here's the link.
http://uk.geocities.com/personel44/maintenance.html

My question is regarding number 3 on the page, which states,
"My Documents": Make sure that you do not have too many files,
folders and sub-folders in 'My Documents'. Create new folders outside
of 'My Documents' and move stuff to the new folders. The 'My
Documents' folder is a special system folder, and there is a known
issue in Windows, where too many files/folders within it can cause
your system to become very sluggish..."

Is there any truth to this statement?

If so, what is the technical basis for this, and how many is too many
files?

Thanks

 

[Harrison]

Since I received no responses, I decided to do my own testing on this.
I ran two sets of Passmark Performance Tests on my system.
These tests measure cpu, memory, disk, and graphics performances.
For more information, see http://www.Passmark.com

Test A was run with a My Documents folder of 10.6 GB* in size.
Test B was run with a My Documents folder of 685 MB in size.

The disks were defragmented before each test in order to take
fragmentation out of the picture. Each test was run following a cold
boot and with antivirus disabled.
__________________________________________________

System Information:
Windows XP Professional SP1
Intel D850MV
P4 2.0 GHz
1024 MB RAM
0/0 - IBM 40 GB, 7,200 RPM Ultra-ATA/100
1/0 - Maxtor 60 GB, 72,00 RPM Ultra-ATA/133
Graphics - NVIDIA GeoForce 2 MX/MX 400 AGP
__________________________________________________

Passmark Performance Test v 4.0 Results:

A - All Tests = 222.6 Passmark / 419.2 megaFLOPS
B - All Tests = 223.6 Passmark / 418.8 megaFLOPS

Further Testing - Cold Boot Times (until disk activity ceases)
A - 1:34:27
B - 1:32:11
__________________________________________________

Summary - The differences in the two tests were negligible. I saw no
ill effects of operating with a My Documents folder of over 10 GB as
opposed to one of only 685 MB.

*The documents added to the folder consisted of 58 folders containing
1,186 files.
The files were a mix of iso, mp3, zip, rar, bin, mpg, asf, and wav.
The sizes ranged from 1kb to 784MB.

 

[Alex Nichol]

My question is regarding number 3 on the page, which states,
"My Documents": Make sure that you do not have too many files,
folders and sub-folders in 'My Documents'. Create new folders outside
of 'My Documents' and move stuff to the new folders. The 'My
Documents' folder is a special system folder, and there is a known
issue in Windows, where too many files/folders within it can cause
your system to become very sluggish..."

Is there any truth to this statement?

None that I know of. In a FAT 32 file system, finding items takes
longer as the number of items in a directory increases (because it is a
linear search). So in theory if you have 30000 or more entries the
access to that directories slows. But the effect would not show if you
organised it in a sensible set of folders, with say 1000 objects at most
at any level - and even that many will be clumsy for *you*. It is one
of those things where a small theoretical point has been vastly inflated
(and that seems to happen quite a bit at such sites)

 

[Harrison]

Thanks, Alex.
I think I'll take the MS MVP's word over some guy with a website