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Assume that there are a large number of photos (+500,000). The structure of photos folders are considered as case no. 1 and 2 where number of black circles are constant (do not change) and number of red circles are increasing. As it is seen in the picture, photos are copied in red and black circles in case no. 1 and 2, respectively. Could you please give me your comments on the folder structure of photos? Is there a better structure that you would propose?

Structure of images folders

Sami
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    Is there a better folder structure? Yes, the one that fits your needs. You can arrange photos chronologically, by location, by user. You don't want to put more than a couple of thousand photos in any one folder to keep your response time down. – Gilbert Le Blanc Mar 14 '14 at 15:36
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    Actually, as long as you know the full path the response time doesn't change no matter the number of files in one folder: with the full path it will be pretty immediate. We had one app that had put > 2,000,000 files in one folder. We couldn't open the folder witrh Explorer, but using the full path of any file always got an immediate response. However, I don't think that that situation was 'Best Practice'! – simon at rcl Mar 14 '14 at 15:57
  • @simonatrcl, thank you for your very informative information. More specifically, there are ~70 black folders and ~170 red folders for this problem. – Sami Mar 14 '14 at 18:26
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    Apple would have you believe that they should all be in a single directory, and that you should index them and access them by direct reference, not by looking at a folder's contents. This is the philosophy behind spotlight and the horrendous 'Finder' in OSX. – Software Engineer Mar 14 '14 at 18:58
  • @GilbertLeBlanc, thanks for your response. I don't think if we have a better idea at this point. I am trying to spend some time, and see if we can do it with more folders. – Sami Mar 14 '14 at 19:11
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    I guess it also depends on the OS. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/197162/ntfs-performance-and-large-volumes-of-files-and-directories – the_lotus Mar 14 '14 at 19:49

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There is no right answer that fits all cases. But here are some questions, that may help you find what is right for you:

  • Do you need to Access the folders using Windows Explorer (or list all files)? If yes choose a structure that gives relativily few items in each folder.
  • Will you need to Archive old photos? If yes use a structure based on chronology.
  • Will you need to Place photos that are accessed more than others on a faster disk? If yes choose a structure based on topics.
Shiraz Bhaiji
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