For older FAT32 drives the limits are 65,534 files in a single folder and max file size of 4 Gigabytes and 2TB of total space or all of disk space that was available or whichever is less. The cluster number of the root directory is stored at offset 0x2c of the FAT32 header and is usually cluster 2.The entry in the cluster map for cluster 2 contains the value 0x0FFFFFFF (end-of-clusters) if this is the only cluster for the root directory. For FAT16 and FAT12, this extra step is needed to compute the special space allocated for the root directory. So use more clusters for this "file" just as you would with any other file. The maximum number of files within a directory of a FAT file system is 65,536 if all files have short filenames (8.3 format). That means the maximum size of a direcotry (file) is 65,536 * 32 bytes, i.e. A directory in the FAT filesystem is only a special type of file. Short filenames are stored in a single 32-byte entry. I am trying to back them up to a modern external drive, with some success - but I would like to know what the practical limit is for number of files per folder, as well as number of files per volume. They lack "RootDirSectors", because FAT32 stores the root directory the same way as files and subdirectories, so RootDirSectors is always zero with FAT32. A file will require at least 2 entries depending on the length of the filename. Short filenames in 8.3 format consists of 8 characters plus optional a "." Upper limit on number files in a directory? FAT32 "There's no practical limit on the combined sizes of all the files in a folder, though there may be limits on the number of files in a folder. If you lost data by accident, free download EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to undelete files, unerase and recover lost data, unformat disk, restore formatted or deleted hard drives, partitions under FAT 32 file system. The external drive is a 1TB USB3 and is freshly formatted to NTFS on a Windows 10 computer. The maximum size for a FAT32 directory is 65536 32bit entries. "FAT32 was introduced to overcome some of the limitations of FAT16. Please let us know the results and if you need further assistance. Project 3 You will create a user-space utility to manipulate a FAT32 file system image ... Next cluster number of root directory in FAT EoC=0x0FFFFFF8 – directory does not go on 38 The root folder on a FAT32 drive is an ordinary cluster chain, so it can be located anywhere on the drive. Large directories should be avoided for performance reasons. Finding the root directory and files Understanding open, close, read, write 2. This article provides detail introduction of FAT 32 file system structure information, FAT 32 boot sector, FAT 32 partition table, FAT 32 MBR. Long filenames are stored in 16bit UNICODE characters and only thirteen characters are stored per directory entry. Maximum number of files in the root directory (FAT12/16; 0 for FAT32) 19-20 Number of sectors in the file system; if 2 B is not large enough, set to 0 and use 4 B value in bytes 32-35 below 21 Media type (0xf0=removable disk, 0xf8=fixed disk) Peufelon: Linux - Desktop: 1: 10-15-2006 01:34 AM: Files and folders that are in root directory: sathish80: Linux - Newbie: 1: 03-17-2006 08:28 AM: Limit of maximum files/direstories per directory? In addition, file allocation table mirroring can be disabled, allowing a copy of the file allocation table other than the first one to be active. The previous limitations on the number of root folder entries no longer exist. 1718Maximum number of files in the root directory (FAT12/16; 0 for FAT32) 1920Number of sectors in the file system; if 2 B is not large enough, set to 0 and use 4 B value in bytes 3235 below Maximum number of files in a single folder: 512 (if I recall correctly, the root folder "/" had a lower limit of 128). 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