too many images in one folder

does it take longer

[soapystar]

i have a folder that is over 1000 images in size and im wondering if the size can affect the speed at which the files are found by a browser. Is there an upper limit at which point images should be put into a new directory?

[webboy1]

I don't have a definite answer, but my guess is that it wouldn't take any longer than if you only had 10 images in the folder.

When you pull an image onto a web page, the exact path to the image is declared within the <img src="image path"> tag. So the browser is not actually having to look for it......you are essentialy telling the browser exactly where it is.

The only thing i can think of that would slow the process down is the 1000 images themsevles and the speed reduction they may be causing on the actual server because of the memory they will no doubt be taking up (depending what the images are).

Webboy

[dmorison]

All the common filing systems out there (NTFS on Windows servers, ext2, ext3 etc under Linux) require a linear search of a directory when opening a file - that is the server does have to look through every file in the directory until it finds the one requested - and that of course takes time.

I personally would not run to anything like that number in a single directory - although i'm saying that without any deep understanding or hard stats - it's just gut feel.

[Andrew Thomas]

Im not sure on speed issues, but i would seperate them into categorised sub folders for maintenance issues, as a 1000 images seems a lot to be in one folder :)and unless named correcly could take time to find the required image when/if making changes.

Andrew

[LKevin]

If you are worrying about the speed, I would advice to optimize all
that images and probably organize them to different folders. This info
also can help to make this:
[reasoft.com...]

[soapystar]

thanks, they were all optimised before uploading, but for ease they have all gone into one directory, i guess i need to start organising it.