How many files can I put in a directory?

Question

Does it matter how many files I keep in a single directory? If so, how many files in a directory is too many, and what are the impacts of having too many files? (This is on

Answer 1

I'm working on a similar problem right now. We have a hierarchichal directory structure and use image ids as filenames. For example, an image with id=1234567 is placed in

..../45/67/1234567_<...>.jpg

using last 4 digits to determine where the file goes.

With a few thousand images, you could use a one-level hierarchy. Our sysadmin suggested no more than couple of thousand files in any given directory (ext3) for efficiency / backup / whatever other reasons he had in mind.