"lothario " wrote in message
...
Hi,

We have some external systems that send us data in CSV format.
These CSV files are periodically deposited in a specific directory on
Windows XP server.

Do you know what is the maximum number of files that a directory can
contain on Windows XP?

Depends on the File System

For FAT32 the limits are :
Maximum file size 4 GB minus 1 byte (232 bytes minus 1 byte)
Maximum volume size 32 GB (implementation)
Files per volume 4,177,920
Maximum number of files and subfolders within a single folder 65,534
(The use of long file names can significantly reduce the number of available
files and subfolders within a folder.)

For NTFS
Maximum file size 16 terabytes minus 64 KB (244 bytes minus 64 KB)
Maximum volume size 256 terabytes minus 64 KB ( 232 clusters minus 1
cluster)
Files per volume 4,294,967,295 (232 minus 1 file)
Files Per Folder as per files per volume

NOTE
If you use large numbers of files in an NTFS folder (300,000 or more),
disable short-file
name generation, especially if the first six characters of the long file
names are similar.

What happens when this maximum is reached?

It will throw an exception

Is there some formal documentation about this - that you can point me
to?


http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tre...c_fil_tdrn.asp

Keith