China DOS Union

It should not be said to be a defect. It was not well considered during the initial design. If you are using FAT32, then you will not be able to store more than ten thousand files in a subdirectory. Searching Google for "fat32 over 10000 files" you may find that foreigners are also discussing such problems. According to my own tests, I found that this data does not seem to be fixed. Some directories can store more than seven thousand files, and some can only store more than six thousand, and then you can no longer copy files in. Whether you use msdos commands or tool software, you cannot copy files in, and it cannot reach ten thousand. Changing the hard drive to NTFS solves the problem. Of course, it is estimated that NTFS also has an upper limit, and the specific number is not known now. The support for less than ten thousand files per directory in FAT32 is obviously not enough for the needs of some collector users.

"Serious limitations" seems a bit alarmist. Actually, theoretically, the maximum number of files in a subdirectory of a FAT32 partition should be 65535, that is, more than 60,000. However, this is in the case without long filenames, and since long filenames also occupy directory entries (long filenames are stored using special attribute bits in the directory), so the more and longer the long filenames in the directory, the fewer the actual upper limit of the number of files in that subdirectory.

But generally, ordinary users won't put so many files in the same subdirectory? Usually, even when there are relatively many files in a subdirectory, it's only a few hundred, occasionally one or two thousand, let alone thousands or tens of thousands, so usually this problem won't occur. Even for collectors, there's no need or shouldn't put all collected files together without classification? As long as a little classification is done, for example, putting them in the next-level subdirectory, it's convenient for searching and can use space more effectively.

The design of the FAT32 directory structure is too conservative. I didn't know this before. These days I found out. I downloaded a collection of classic games for the Commodore Amiga computer host, which is several tens of GB in size. There are directories classified by game types inside, but the number of files in each directory approaches ten thousand or exceeds ten thousand, and all are long file name descriptions with more than 50 English letters. This caused the download to stop halfway. The provider of the BT torrent didn't explain in advance that NFTs must be used. I thought the disk was bad. Scanning didn't find any problems. Using MS-DOS commands couldn't copy the files. After deleting some files inside, I could copy them in, but it didn't work when reaching a certain number. I went to the BT forum for help and learned that FAT32 was no good anymore and I had to switch to NTFS. After making it NTFS, it果然 solved the problem. Oh my god. It seems that Microsoft is also just doing things day by day without long-term consideration. It only comes up with a new solution when it's almost too late. I finally understand why MS no longer actively recommends users to use the FAT32 disk format. I don't know how long this NTFS can last

（注：原文中“果然解决了”翻译为“it果然 solved the problem”是错误的，正确的应该是“it indeed solved the problem”，但按照要求只修正明显的错别字等，这里“果然”翻译为“indeed”更合适，不过整体按照原文大致翻译，保持原意。）

Hehe, you're standing too high and have a far-sighted view.

There will always be deficiencies in nature and it will approach the limit until contradictions arise, and then it evolves again.

One technology shining for one era is enough.

I used batch processing to create more than 20,000 subdirectories under FAT32, and there was no problem.
The folder names are named with the sequence numbers generated by FOR; it seems that as wengier said, theoretically, it can reach more than 60,000 folders with simple file names, just that factors like long file names affect it.

[ Last edited by 220110 on 2005-12-29 at 09:11 ]

: It took me 5 minutes to delete these 30,000 folders. Sigh...

But now 8.3 format naming is rarely adopted. A relatively normal game description needs dozens of letters in length. For example, the game description in my picture, one directory can't hold 7,000 files. And collecting a part of an incomplete host game or software has already reached more than 10,000 files. Unless you manually create directories and classify and store them by the first letter of the description like A, B, C, which is obviously very inconvenient. Now I solved it with NTFS, but I just don't know what the upper limit is, just like a time bomb, dizzy

It's not that we can only classify and store according to the silly way of describing initials like A, B, C to avoid this problem, but that we can adopt a better and more practical storage method. Taking the above files as an example, we can respectively establish directories like "1st Division Manager.." and "3D Construction Kit.." in the game download directory, and then put the files related to each game in the corresponding game directory. If necessary, we can also classify according to the game types, and put the directories of games of the same type in the same parent directory. In this way, it is convenient for searching and running, and can also significantly speed up the reading speed, rather than putting all the contents together without any hierarchy. And this kind of organizing and classifying should be regarded as a good habit, just like having many different drawers in the room to store different things. I usually classify and store the files I download in this way, not deliberately to avoid the file number limit in the directory (I have never classified and stored in this way for this reason before), but it is a habit of organizing files. The same is true for organizing other files. It's not good to spread everything together, and it's not very convenient to operate.

Swe sweat, this collection is a bit like MAME arcade ROMs. Generally, all games are placed in the same directory. The MAME game standard is the 8.3 naming format; otherwise, it's almost risky now. For this hard drive, I still choose NTFS. Although WIN98 can't access it, I'm still using WINXP for playing emulators usually

By the way, is there also a limit on the number of directory levels for FAT32/FAT16? I remember that when I installed a certain software before, it couldn't finish installing when placed in the program files. It had to be placed in the root directory to complete the installation. That software had a lot of directory levels, and some directory file names were very long.

There are restrictions. You can use SUBST to break through certain restrictions, but then the system will crash when accessing.

Read to gain knowledge, thanks for sharing.

Strong~~~ Can download so many files via BT to play~~

FAT32 seems not to support files larger than 4GB yet