Windows 7 – some basics on file sizes and disk sizes


After my supposedly last piece of MBA assignment was done, I felt little bit relieved. There were slew of messages from class mates in facebook about how wonderful it feels to be done after the grueling 20 months of studying( and partying).
Relieved little bit, I was getting on to next project (of course, I still need one more group paper to be done for Corporate Strategy In Practice)I was copying photos in to a directory this morning. There were thousands of photos accumulated over the months. As I was copying tons of photos into the SSD harddisk, I was wondering about the file size limit and number of files in a directory! Started digging around little bit….

Let me make this clear, I’m no fan of Windows OS. However, the damn OS gets work done.

Here is what I found…

Windows 7 (and really NTFS file system), there are practically no limits on number of files and disk space the OS can handle. Here

◦Maximum disk size: 256 terabytes
◦Maximum file size: 256 terabytes
◦Maximum number of files on disk: 4,294,967,295
◦Maximum number of files in a single folder: 4,294,967,295

Really who is going to have a disk that is 256 terbytes? I think we are all good with such a monsterous file system for now. Who knows… in few years we will look back and laugh at these limitations!