Re: NTFS question - max number of files on root of C:?

yeah, after I deleted the extra files and remounted the drive as master the
computer booted normally. Weird. Just for drill I ran a chkdsk (no problems
found) and defragged the volume. That 2,048 number really caught my eye and
reminded me of the 512 FAT limit. I'm no math major but having worked with
computers since DOS 2 numbers like 512, 1,024, and 2,048 send up all kinds
of red flags.

"John John" <audetweld@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uCXba1GBIHA.1184@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You can put 4,294,967,295 on an NTFS volume and technically you can stuff
them all in the root folder if you wanted. There is however instances
where having a "large" number of files in the root folder leads to MFT
fragmentation that could lead to an "NTLDR is missing" error message when
you boot the computer so it is not a good idea to store too many files in
the root folder. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320397/ According to
that article the problem was resolved with SP4.

The 2,048 files and the fact that it is a multiple of 512 is a coincidence
only. Did you get the computer to boot after you moved the files? A
blinking cursor only at boot time usually means that there is no active
partition or that the active flag was removed (the wrong partition is
active).

John

keith w wrote:

I always thought that NTFS did away with limitations on the number of
files you can have in the root directory. Today I had a user that
couldn't boot up to Win2K, the box just sits there with a blinking cursor
before the normal splash screen has a chance to come up, and I figured
the hard drive might have gotten hosed, so I mounted the drive as a slave
(E:) in another computer to see if I could recover any data. When I went
to the root of E: there were exactly 2,048 files there, mostly .csv and
.txt files from data downloads from the past 3 or 4 years, in addition
to the normal system files and app logs. Apparently somebody told this
person that this is where she should put all of her data files. These
were all one-off files that weren't needed anymore so I was able to blow
them out and remount the drive as the master and Win2K boots normally
again. The number 2,048 is an exact multiple of 4 times the 512 limit in
FAT... no way this could just be a coincidence! I Googled this but
couldn't find anything that points to a 2,048 file limit on NTFS. Not
that this is a big deal or anything that we're likely to see again, but
now I"m really curious.


.

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