Folders

How Big

from WinCustomize Forums
Well I would like to ask people how large should Folders, with sub folders, be. Let me make an example, for instance I have a great number of Wallpapers which I have all in one folder with some in sub-folders if they are same but different only by size or color, while all the single Walls I also have in the same folder. Now lately I have noticed that the Wallpaper Folder when I open it it gets a bit slughish, is it because I have 1.02GB of stuff there 109 Folders and 1,790Files. If this is large is it better to more Wallpaper Folders and split these. I hope I made sence. I also ask how many W.Blind skins is a good number to have stored in the W.Blinds too?

Would appreciate your advice.
3,249 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The bigger a folder is means more to be organized to open folder, but should only be slowish first time opened after
starting or reboot, my music folder is 4.23GB 3,336 files 284 folders, takes about 10 seconds to open first time,
next time is almost instantly open. As for WB at one point I had 250 skins in folder, it is just to slow for WB,
or display properties to open with that many, I stay around 80 now, WB would take 30 to 40 seconds to build skin list
when had 250 skins.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Could be you need to defragment hard drive, with use files get moved around with opening and closing, making things
run slower.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Fewer folders may be better, and I would agree with Cavan1 in comment #2 - defrag the drive. You may be seeing the effects of relying on the drives heads having to move around too much to grab files.

If it becomes an issue, burn the images to disc, delete them from the drive - then defrag the drive to tighten up the files left. You can then install the files and defrag again - this should place all the files in contiguous clusters and make loading faster.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thank you Citizen Cavan 1 and Corky 0 I have done as you have adviced and yes it does work much faster now, I really appreciate your help.

Thank you again
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just one more thing. When defragmenting - should you still do it even if told you don't need to, and is it safe to do it many times, like one after the another?
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Defrag at least once every month,that is the recommended by MS.

As for me i have My Pictures divided into 6 subfolders and many many more subfolders in it with 4,5GB size,around 4500 files in around 800 folders and it doesn't take time to load just because i did it in a good file structure method.A simple example just for walls.
My Pictures:
A. My Art Gallery
1.3D Art:
a.Abstracts
b.Landscapes
c.Best Of Best
2.2D Art:
a.Abstracts
b.Landscapes
c.Best Of Best
3.Art Noir
4.Art
a.Each artist has its own folder.

See it's all in good file structuring.

I also did the same with My Music folder which is 60GB size with 14000 songs and still get very little delay.

I hope i have been of some help.

PS:Lots of patience is required...
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
OzGirl,

It's okay to defrag even if Windows says you don't need to.

No, it won't hurt to do one after another. Windows will take care of correctly arranging the files.

As Cyberworld said, once a month would be fine.

Disc architecture 101:

A hard disc is comprised of a number of discs stacked on top of one another with space in between each disc. There is an armature with heads on it (you can loosely think of this as a number of record player arms and needles on them - the needle represents the read/write head).

The whole assembly is set up with an arm and head over each surface of each disc, thus the space between discs to allow for arm and heads to fit. When you ask the OS to save, the arms move the heads to open sections of the disc and write data - and when you ask the OS to open a file the arms move the heads to the proper spot on the disc to read the data so the OS can load it on screen.

When you delete a file, you are in essence removing the file from it's spot on the disc(s), which leaves an empty space on the disc(s). Then, when you save another file, the OS will start to write the file in available spaces, including the empty spaces left by deleted files. If the file does not fit in the first emtpy space, the OS will write some of it to this space and the rest to other empty spaces. This is how "fragmented" files are formed, and this in turn makes the hard drive move the arms and heads to several spots on the disc surfaces to read a file.

Defragmenting tries to place all the pieces of a file together, so the arms only have to move to one spot, wait a couple milliseconds until the disc spins the data under the heads so they can read the data and send it on it's merry way to you.

This is a simplistic way to look at drives and I have left out a lot of the technical aspects which are not needed for this explanation.

Hard drives have an average life expectancy of 3 to 5 years. They usually fail because of a mechanical breakdown - the armature and heads stop working correctly. So if you were to unnecessarily defrag 3 times a day for 2 years, you might shorten the life of the drive, but if you defrag 2 times (one after another) once a month - you will not be doing any unneccessary damage to the disc.

Glad to hear you had success.
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
When you delete a file, you are in essence removing the file from it's spot on the disc(s), which leaves an empty space on the disc(s). Then, when you save another file, the OS will start to write the file in available spaces, including the empty spaces left by deleted files.


I might be wrong, but I don't think this is correct. It is my belief that when you delete a file, only the reference to the physical location on the disk and it's space allocation is deleted, its address, if you will. The file itself still exists, but the FAT (or whatever it's called now doesn't know about it anymore. So when you write to disk the OS sees that there is an address and some space available and it will fill that space up. If the written file is larger than that space, the OS will then save what it can in the space available and then finish saving the file in other available spaces and thus fragmenting the file.

I don't know exactly what NTFS does, so this may be wrong now.

(you can loosely think of this as a number of record player arms...


What's a record player
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
werewolf,

I believe you are correct, I did not want to get too technical, so did not include the fact that data is always there once written unless you take the drive down to bare metal again, and re-format the low level format.

My understanding of NTFS is that the cluster sizes addressed are 4 bits instead of the 32 bits that FAT32 uses - therefore, making it easier to fit files in contiguous clusters (and other space saving and security considerations), though I freely admit my formal education in this is about 12 months worth - so may not be 100 percent technically accurate.

Had to think twice about using the "record player" analogy.........man, do I feel old!
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Glad to help, when I defrag, first set screen saver to none as some have high resources needs, I always do a second
defrag, will be much faster and always seems to find a couple more files to move. I defrag about every 2 weeks, as I
download just about everything new from gallerys then delete what I don't like.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Couldn't edit my comment above, please disregard this portion, as it is inaccurate:

"My understanding of NTFS is that the cluster sizes addressed are 4 bits instead of the 32 bits that FAT32 uses - therefore, making it easier to fit files in contiguous clusters (and other space saving and security considerations."

Corky turns red faced, and moves away.....head hung low.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I really can't thank enough all of you, all this information has given me an insight of how it roughly works, I am a girl who is not much in to all that technical stuff with the computers although I work as a graphic designer for a newspaper so I get tired at times of all the tecchnical stuff, but I am also a person who, when I love something, IT just has to be at it's best, I like my computer to run smoothly, but don't understand a lot of things about it and probably never want to know more than I need to, because I just use this for fun, to brows the net and download, download .............I just love the stuff some people create, I love having my desktop customized and changed and love all the new inventions of art that are here and else where. Well I sound like Citizen Cavan1 who also has dowloading habbits like my self.
P.S Corky is also funny no need to be red faced and with head down because you tought this girl something.

Again I want to thank each one of you firstly Citizen Cavan1, Corky0,Citizen Cyberworld and warewolf I really appreciate your input you have greatly explained what I needed to know. Thank you again.