[ic] Performance hit from having many images in one directory?

[Jeff Fearn]

On 8/23/05, John1 <list_subscriber at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> At the moment we have all our item images in a single directory (and all the
> thumbnails in one directory).  There are currently only about 1000 items,
> but this could increase significantly as time goes on (especially as we tend
> to leave any images of old discontinued products there just in case search
> engines etc still have them catalogued).
> 
> We run the Linux ext3 filing system.  Is there a performance hit from
> storing loads of files in a single directory?  I am sure I read somewhere
> once that there *is* a performance hit, but I have no idea how many image
> files we would need to store in one directory before the performance
> implications became significant, bearing in mind that each page loads
> between 10 and 20 images from the thumbnails directory and 1 image from the
> main items directory?
> 
> Please can anyone enlighten me on this?  Thanks.

Good discussion at http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=122241

Jeff