> On NTFS systems, this is most likely app-related such as Explorerer
where they have to deal with
> slogging through all the extra files, as noted by another poster.
An App opening a specific file will
> see almost no degradation because the NTFS uses a tree structure to
maintain fast access to a file by name.
Very true. Getting that one file is very quick.
The reason that Explorer is so slow is that it has to at the very least
get the name of every single file. In the DOS days, that was relatively
quick and easy (a directory of 20,000 files would take up about 320K).
With NTFS, though, each file typically uses 8K, so 20,000 files would
take up 150MB. So doing a directory listing of 20,000 files is like
loading a 150MB files. Worse, if the directory is fragmented (which is
very common), it takes even longer.
With millions of files, it can take hours just to do directory listings.
As someone else pointed out, disabling the last access time can help;
also, disabling 8.3 can help too (only on computers with no programs
that need 8.3, so you have to be careful with that). Disabling 8.3 can
help a lot if the first 5-6 characters of the filenames are often the same.
-Scott
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