Hi,

Neil Harvey recently mentioned a "files.per.spindle" limit.

What he's referring to is that the label table on a given
disk drive has room for a maximum of about 262,144 entries.

This means that in a single-disk volume set, you couldn't
get more than 262,144 files.  If a file has more than 20 extents,
then this theoretical limit is reduced even more.  Roughly,
each file whose file label is in a particular label table
uses 1 + ((#extents - 1) div 20) entries.  A file with
0 through 20 extents uses one entry (usually).
A file with 21 through 40 extents uses two entries (usually).

A 9 GB disk drive has 1,325,752 pages (a page is 4,096 bytes).
This means that if the average file size is 5 pages, there would
be 262,144 files on the drive.  If the average file size is
1 page, you'd be unable to utilize about 4/5 of the drive.
(Note: all files with any disk space allocated take at least
1 page of disk, and disk is allocated in increments of one page.)

HP is aware of this limitation, and is hopefully considering
solutions for it (some have already been proposed).

--
Stan Sieler                                          [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.allegro.com/sieler.html