Is there a limit in the number of attachments in the files folder?

[cactux]

Hello,

It seems that all attachments are directly stored as files in the /files/ folder, without subfolders.
Is there a limit?
I plan to migrate a forum with more than 173.000 files, and I am wondering if this could be an issue. If so, is there any precautions I should take?

Thanks

[Mick]

Physically no (it's in the billions anyway) but hosts may put a limit on it, it's best to check with them.

[[Dimetrodon]]

Hello.

Many hosts I have encountered heavily restrict it to something in the 10s of MB.

[KevC]

Realistically, is anyone actually going to ever look at any of the oldest 100,000 or 150,000 of those again?

I've trashed attachments from more than 2 years old on boards before to save space and no one has ever said a file is missing.

[[Dimetrodon]]

I've trashed attachments from more than 2 years old on boards before to save space and no one has ever said a file is missing.

Not going to lie though, in an era of multi-tb hard drives, storage of only a few mb does strike me as pretty small.

[KevC]

Depends what they are. If people upload photos taken straight from an SLR they can easily be huge. A lot of PDFs with images are not small either.

[Lumpy Burgertushie]

some hosts have limits on the number of "nodes" you can have in your account (whatever a node is)
somtimes either the host or the ftp software limits the number of files to 9999 plus 1 for the folder for a total of 10000 files.

robert

[Mick]

storage of only a few mb does strike me as pretty small

Physical available size is only part of the story, another factor is the load placed on a server when it's having to search through hundreds of thousands of file names. That’s why hosts place limits.

[cactux]

Thanks a lot for the answer, and the discussion. Interesting

In my case, the forum hosts many photos of plants, covering of trips, visits in fields or collections, etc: I think I must keep them.

[Lumpy Burgertushie]

until you get to 10000 don't worry about it.

robert

[cactux]

until you get to 10000 don't worry about it

I am already at almost 200 000 on a forum I plan to migrate to phpBB...
Should I expect to run into some problems?

[warmweer]

I am already at almost 200 000 on a forum I plan to migrate to phpBB...
Should I expect to run into some problems?

That probably depends on the host settings.
IIRC last year I upgraded a board with more than 100.000 attachments (not sure how many exactly but I remember cursing at the time needed to transfer everything by FTP ..twice) and the board upgraded just fine.

[Mick]

hosts may put a limit on it, it's best to check with them

[JLA]

I'm thinking the current version should be able to support unlimited attachements. With attachment mod on phpbb2 we have over 217 million attachments and it works fine. The only limits you should encounter on either version would be host limited or storage limits. One thing to keep in mind in a WAMP environment, you can run into limits on how many attachments are stored in a single folder in the Windows file system if the attachments are too large. The fix is to just have multiple attachment folders or if possible compress the attachments to a smaller size so you do not hit the limit.

[cheesecrakr]

I've run into this problem, trying to migrate my phpBB forum from Hostgator to a different host. Hostgator will not allow me to view or download all those files. How can I get them off of hostgator and over to my new host?