Re: OT?: FAT32(/16?) Question: Max. files in top level
On Thu, 8 Dec 2016 13:46:25 +0100
Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:
> > As I recall that there is (or used to be?) a limit on the number of
> > files in the
> > top level directory of a FAT32 (or 16?) partition / drive. If you
> > needed to
> > have more files in a directory, you had to create a subdirectory
> > (and, as I
> > recall, there was no limit on the number of files in a subdirectory).
> > Does anybody else (reading this) recall that, and recall more
> > details, like
> > the maximum number of files and which FAT systems (32 or 16) this
> > applied to,
> > and, further, is it still a limit on FAT32?
> > The limit might have existed in FAT12 as well (or some similar
> > limit), but as
> > I recall it was in FAT16 or later.
>
> In FAT like many filesystems, directories are just files that contain
> the name of other files and pointers to their data. The size of
> directories is limited by the size of the file that implements it. It
> can grow as needed.
>
> Except in FAT, the root directory is statically allocated, and can not
> grow.
>
> You can observe the -r option to mkdosfs for example.
<snip>
I encountered this many times on windowz FAT32 in a non-root dir, but
never on Linux. I suspect that it was/is one of their "Features". The
said "Feature" still was there when using ntfs in XP if I remember
correctly.
It's not hard to trigger. Just mount a flash drive and make some file
using, for example, a script (or wget -m https://wikipedia.org).
Sincerely,
David
Reply to: