how many files on a subdir ?

graziano1968 · 08-09-2006, 04:34 AM

Hello

I have to place about 4000 files on a subdir of my domain (/documentation) .

I have centos with ext3 filesystem.

Talking about filesytem and IO performance, it's better to place all these 4000 files on /documentation , or it is better to place 250 files on
/documentation1
other 250 on
/documentation2
and so on ... ?

Thank you
Graziano

J.W. · 08-09-2006, 11:02 PM

Having 4K files in a single directory in an ext3 filesystem should not result in any performance issues. Technically, I believe that there are no hard limits as to how many files you can put into a single directory, but once you get to 5 digits (eg, >10,000 files) regardless of whether the computer can handle it not, the human cannot.

With 4000 files, you may want to break things up into alphabetical order, eg, A-G, H-M, N-S, T-Z. Not for the computer's sake, but to make it easier for your users

graziano1968 · 08-09-2006, 11:18 PM

ok thank you!