SD card limitations

Hi all,

I just bought a 2GB micro sd card and I noticed it won't let me put more
than 174 files in the root. I tried to fill it up with MP3's but once it
reached 174 files it told me it was full or had some unknown error
preventing me from writing to it. I added a folder in the root and started
putting more files in there and everything works fine, but I was just
wondering why I have to do this ? I should be able to put 5000 files in the
root if I want to right ?

The SD card is for my phone (Nokia 6126).. same behaviour whether it's in
the phone (data transfer mode) or out (memory card reader).

Chris

Skeleton Man wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I just bought a 2GB micro sd card and I noticed it won't let me put more
> than 174 files in the root. I tried to fill it up with MP3's but once it
> reached 174 files it told me it was full or had some unknown error
> preventing me from writing to it. I added a folder in the root and started
> putting more files in there and everything works fine, but I was just
> wondering why I have to do this ? I should be able to put 5000 files in the
> root if I want to right ?
>
> The SD card is for my phone (Nokia 6126).. same behaviour whether it's in
> the phone (data transfer mode) or out (memory card reader).
>
> Chris
>
>
Microsoft has always had a limit on the number of files in the
root of floppys/drives.
Just put things in a sub-directory, and when that fills up,
they automatically add blocks to that dir.
The limit for fat 16 drives was at about 75 entries in a subdir,
causing system slowdown for more than that, because of having to
scan the additional dir blocks.

"Skeleton Man" <invalid@guestwho.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I just bought a 2GB micro sd card and I noticed it won't let me put more
> than 174 files in the root. I tried to fill it up with MP3's but once it
> reached 174 files it told me it was full or had some unknown error
> preventing me from writing to it. I added a folder in the root and started
> putting more files in there and everything works fine, but I was just
> wondering why I have to do this ? I should be able to put 5000 files in the
> root if I want to right ?
>
> The SD card is for my phone (Nokia 6126).. same behaviour whether it's in
> the phone (data transfer mode) or out (memory card reader).
>
> Chris

I haven't put too many files in ROOT for many years after finding out that
DOS had limited to around 512 files (or something like that), and I have
started using DIR and Sub_Dirs heavily ever since (and it was over a decade
ago).

Same with CD/DVD they all have limted number of file on DIR and can be
either unlimited on sub_dir or at least to around 2,000-2,500 files or so on
sub-dir

While we are at it, the limitation of SD is 2GB Max, and to break the 2GM
max barrier then you will have to go for SDHC

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:31:37 -0400, "Skeleton Man"
<invalid@guestwho.com> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I just bought a 2GB micro sd card and I noticed it won't let me put more
>than 174 files in the root. I tried to fill it up with MP3's but once it
>reached 174 files it told me it was full or had some unknown error
>preventing me from writing to it. I added a folder in the root and started
>putting more files in there and everything works fine, but I was just
>wondering why I have to do this ? I should be able to put 5000 files in the
>root if I want to right ?
>
>The SD card is for my phone (Nokia 6126).. same behaviour whether it's in
>the phone (data transfer mode) or out (memory card reader).
>
>Chris
>

FAT16 imposes a small limit in the root, IIRC it was 512
entries but fewer if filenames were more than 8.3
characters. If your phone can use FAT32, try it.