Maximum Files in a Directory

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David - 24 Jul 2003 19:00 GMT

All the documentation I can find says Fat32 supports up
to 65534 files in a directory. I am experiencing a
problem with 32812 beeing the limit. No long file names
involved.
Any ideas?

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Tim Slattery - 24 Jul 2003 21:12 GMT

>All the documentation I can find says Fat32 supports up
>to 65534 files in a directory. I am experiencing a
>problem with 32812 beeing the limit. No long file names
>involved.

A "long file name" for these purposes is any that doesn't fit the DOS
8.3 standard. That means any with non-standard characters (like
spaces, $, %, @, (, ) - pretty much anything but letters and numbers),
even if they are short. Each file name takes one directory entry. Each
LFN takes from two to thirteen. 32,812 files can easily eat up 65,000
entries.

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Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
Slattery_T@bls.gov

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