At 4/24/98 11:05 AM , you wrote:
>The maximum number of files in the root directory is limited to 512, if
>using 8.3 DOS naming routine.
>
>However if you are using long names the count goes down as each long name is
>spilt into several short names and each takes short name takes a FAT entry.
>For example a long name of 20 characters will reduce the number of files in
>the root directory to 510.
>

Actually it gets even more complicated in that anything not conforming to
the 8.3 *uppercase only* file names, will take at least two entries.  One
for the "old" DOS compatible and another for the Win95 standard to preserve
length and case.

MS recommends limiting the files in the root directory.


Some additional info from Microsoft KB:
(http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q120/1/38.asp)
====
To ensure compatibility with MS-DOS, Windows 95 uses a standard file
allocation table (FAT) file system. The root directory for a FAT drive has
a fixed size and is stored in a fixed location on the disk. All hard disk
drives use 32 sectors of 512 bytes each to store the root directory. This
limits the root directory on a hard disk drive to 16K: 32 sectors x 512
bytes per sector = 16,384 bytes, or 16K.
====
When you name a file or folder in Windows 95, the system creates a primary
file name, which can be a long file name, and an MS-DOS-compliant 8.3
alias. If the file or folder name is already 8.3-compliant, only one
directory entry is used.

NOTE: For a file or folder name to be 8.3-compliant, it must contain only
those characters that are valid for an 8.3 alias name, and it *MUST BE
COMPOSED OF ALL UPPERCASE CHARACTERS*
=====
NOTE: Any file whose name contains more than 13 characters requires 3 or
more directory entries.




Doug Simmons
WWW Pager: http://wwp.mirabilis.com/2402199
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I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
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