Maximum Dir Size on FAT32?

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peter - 11 Dec 2003 23:30 GMT

I have found that I can not add any more files to large directories on a
FAT32 drive, e.g. 3.7 GB and 22,000 files.

What is the limit? I guess that the limit lies in maximum number of clusters
rather than the size or number of files?
BTW, is there an easy way of determining the number of clusters used by a
directory?

TIA

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Tim Slattery - 12 Dec 2003 14:10 GMT

>I have found that I can not add any more files to large directories on a
>FAT32 drive, e.g. 3.7 GB and 22,000 files.
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>BTW, is there an easy way of determining the number of clusters used by a
>directory?

There's no limit on the number of files on a FAT32 partition, or on
the number of clusters in a directory. There is a limit on the number
of directory entries in a directory. Each file or subdirectory
occupies from one to thirteen directory entries, depending on the
length of its name. A FAT32 directory can hold at most 65,000 entries,
so you can indeed fill it up, and 22,000 files would easily do it.

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

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