200,000 images in single folder in linux, performance issue or not?

Question

I have a php/mysql website with over 200,000 images in single folder (linux server). I don\'t think, that I will never need to see them in

Answer 1

It's quite probable that some time in the future you might want to do something where having all the images dumped in a single folder will hurt you, or something unexpected will happen and you will regret doing it that way.

On the other hand, having the files split into several folders doesn't seem to have many disadvantages, besides added complexity in dealing with them.

Performance will vary depending on your filesystem, its configuration and your access patterns. I believe it would be quite strange for performance to be perceptibly worse if splitting the files between multiple folders.

So I'd say, split into different folders...