How many files can I put in a directory?

Question

Does it matter how many files I keep in a single directory? If so, how many files in a directory is too many, and what are the impacts of having too many files? (This is on

Answer 1

The question comes down to what you're going to do with the files.

Under Windows, any directory with more than 2k files tends to open slowly for me in Explorer. If they're all image files, more than 1k tend to open very slowly in thumbnail view.

At one time, the system-imposed limit was 32,767. It's higher now, but even that is way too many files to handle at one time under most circumstances.