On Thu, 8 Dec 2016 13:46:25 +0100 Nicolas George <geo...@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
