Yes, that was my first thought as well. Divide the files like formerly in a filing cabinet.

As an example will create directories A, B, C, D and E within the current directory.the Linux-commandline is that much powerful, it will solve your problem. For example you may expand the formerly example this will (after creating the directory) move all documentes whose name start with an "A" into the directory A. The examples are executed on the commandline, if you write a little script for this purpose it will become a little more convenient.

I'd recommend to read here: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html or more advanced here http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/.

Note that you can post your problem/requirements in the Programming forum of LQ: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/ you will get much help there.

Markus

Well thanks a lot for your answers
In fact it is not a serious problem , mainly I was concerned why windows can manage my archive faster than linux since linux is faster
Ill try what you recommend and propably I will be ok.

joham34,

It looks like the graphical tools such as Thunar and Nautilus cause the problems you described. I suggest you to use instead of them Midnight Commander file manager.

To install it run Terminal and use the command:

sudo apt-get install mc

You said you use OpenOffice.org but you didn’t specified the format of the files. To display the contents of SXW or ODT files you have to install odt2txt. To display the contents of DOC files you have to install docview. The best option is to install both of them:

sudo apt-get install odt2txt docview

To run Midnight Commander in Terminal window use the command:

mc

When you highlight the file name and press F3 key Midnight Commander displays the content of the selected file.

Thanks to odt2txt and docview you’ll be able to inspect your files fast before opening them with OpenOffice.org.

I’m also pretty sure Midnight Commander will open your huge directories much faster than Thunar or Nautilus.

Report here the results of that experiment, please.

I wouldn't say that at all, I'd just say it's a weakness in the method and software that you are chosing to browse your files. As mentioned above, the command line is king.

Its the same with me. Dirs with large no. of files takes considerably more time to open in Linux than it does on windows(eg /usr/bin or windows/system32). But instead of finding a solution i have learnt to live with it.I would suggest the using command line with tools like find and grep or semi-graphical tools like midnight commander.

Maybe windows is doing read-aheads when you open the parent dir and generating all the listed file names ready for "if" you happen to go into that directory?

I installed Midnight Commander which is pretty fast as you said . It needs about 10 secs to browse the archive for the first time , then ( as opposed to nautilus) , if I close and reopen it , it opens it instantly . I try to learn to work with it as I havent managed yet to figure out how can i find a file. Say , I have named some patients adding eg the word "complication" in their filename So the filename looks like: Surname_name_birthdate_complication
Sometimes I need to find all patients who had the "complication" and so I search for "complication" and e.g nautilus will display all my "complication" files.
Ill try to figure out if I can use it that way and let you know
By the way , with Thunar the first opening is slow but the second very fast. The same is true for the gnome search tool .
Also, when I first open my archive with ls , browsing is very fast with Thunar but lingers somewhat with nautilus. SO I guess the list created is stored in memory and browsers utilize it somehow

I also considered this possibility so I put my flash drive on a winXP system after the login . It listed the files immediately although the flash was not there while booting. I believe something else is going on , may be linux searches for more informations while browsing
The explanation EdGR gave earlier in this thread :
"Windows determines the file type by looking at the three-letter extension in the file name. That takes very little time.
Linux doesn't have an absolutely standardized convention for file name extensions, and file names often don't have extensions at all. As a result, Linux file managers and the 'file' program must read part of the file contents to determine the file type. For this reason, Thunar can take a while to open a folder containing thousands of files.
Ed "
sounds reasonable
Command line is a fantastic tool and I am struggling to get to learn use it , am very excited about it but sometimes you need graphical tools as in my case.

Ah fair enough.

I'd investigate if you can tell thunar to just show the files at first (I'm going to try this myself when I get home but I'm tempted to just move off thunar altogether) and do the fancy stuff with previews etc once it had loaded the number of files/directories.

I was in a doctor's office last year and much to my surprise was a ubuntu screen saver running on the computer monitor. The whole clinic was running networked ubuntu computers using software from OSCAR.

http://www.oscarcanada.org/

I was using windows but 2 years ago my pc got a virus despite the antivirus and the fact I was visiting only medical sites. I lost a part of my archives, big trouble. Well since then I use linux and I really love it. I wish I had time to learn command line better but am trying to in my little spare time. Linux is solid, fast, absolutely configurable and have managed to do my jobs much better than with Windows.Most important, for me, I love the Linux philosophy. Unfortunately some medical devices dont have linux drivers but I solved the problem with virtualbox.
Recently I bought a laptop and at least in Greece laptops come with Windows preloaded by the law! I got very angry and formatted the hard disc immediately although I had paid for it.

Dear W1k0 , I performed various experiments and here are the conclusions :
1) All 3 browsers (Thunar, Nautilus and Midnighth Conqueror) needed 18 secs to open the archive (flash formatted to FAT32) for the first time after pluqing the flash in. Then, reopening was somewhat slower for nautilus but in general much faster that first time
2) Here are the times for first browsing in various flash drive formats ( I did the experiment with the same drive)
FΑΤ32 18 secs , NTFS 5 secs , EXT3 3 secs, EXT4 3 secs.
So , I am wondering whether I should format to EXT3 or EXT 4 ( any suggestion? ) which shortens dramatically the browsing time.
(Interestingly when copying my archive from my NTFS formatted flash to the hard disc (same dual boot PC), the transfer rate was somewhat higher for linux vs Win 7 although NTFS is developed from MS)
So, it appears that the problem was mainly due to the FAT32 format of my flash drive. I did the test in another pc, similar results too. With NTFS format, linux works 3,5 times faster and with both EXT3-EXT4 ,6 times faster, it is peculiar that I didnt find it while googling my issue.
Thanks for your support.

I suppose you mean that the 'single' Windows default file manager 'Windows Explorer' is currently faster than your Linux setup, which could be 'any number' of software combination possibilities?

Is is Microsoft's only sanctioned file manager, so I suppose it's performance would be a priority.

You mentioned you create your files as OpenOffice documents. So I assume you store them in ODT or DOC format. In such case your file can use “Surname_name_birthdate_complication.odt” or “Surname_name_birthdate_complication.doc” name.

To find all files concerning the particular “complication” with Midnight Commander do the following steps:

1. Go to the directory at the top of your records collection.
2. Press “Esc” key and then “?” key. (On my US keyboard to type “?” I have to press “Shift” and “/” keys).
3. In “File name:” field type “*complication*”. (First star is for the text before the word “complication” and the second star for the text after that word).
4. Assure “Content:” field is empty.
5. Press “Enter”.

In result Midnight Commander will display the list of all files including the word “complication” in their names.

You can browse that list using “↑” and “↓” keys as well as “PgUp” and “PgDn” keys.

I assume you installed odt2txt and docview programs.

In such case after highlighting the selected file you can display it’s contents after pressing “F3” key once or twice.

To go back to the list of the files press “F3” key once.

After you find the file you searched for press “Enter” to go to it.

***

Tip:

When you want to use command line press “Ctrl” and “o” keys to hide Midnight Commander’s window. To show it anew press “Ctrl” and “o” keys once again.

Assuming you’d like to access those files using Linux as well as Windows use EXT3 file system and install in Windows freeware Linux reader.