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[WolfWalker]

in the root dirctory under xp?

Drive name 'Music'

Abba
Aerosmith
so on and so forth

[Mr ChriZ]

As long as you're using NTFS
Many Many Many Many Many Many Many Many Many Many Many Many Folders.
 

(ie to all intense and purpose no limit)
Someone more technical might come out with a number to the power of
another number.

[KingSparta]

in the root dirctory under xp?

Drive name 'Music'

Abba
Aerosmith
so on and so forth

Do not do that! you will regret it

And I Do Not Think It Is Limitless

[benn600]

It does slow down when you get huge directories.  I have considered breaking my artists up to letters (A/Avril Lavigne/Albums), for example, because loading my list of artists can take a short while--but I don't do it enough to justify the risk of messing things up.

[dmp]

Four Billion Two Hundred Ninety Four Million Nine Hundred Sixty Seven Thousand Two Hundred Ninety Five total files are pemited on an NTFS partition. 

Folders are, I believe, counted as files. 

You tend to run into path length and file name size issues long before you hit the max number of files.  

dmp

[glynor]

I think there is a special case for number of folders in the root of a drive.  I could be wrong....

EDIT -- Nevermind.  From here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/Windows2000Pro/reskit/part3/proch17.mspx?mfr=true

NTFS does not restrict the number of entries in the root folder.

[WolfWalker]

so it would be ok for me to name my drive music and then just have the artists listed in the root directory.

[Alex B]

I have substituted* my D:\Music root folder with the drive letter X: and imported the music files from the X: drive.

This virtual X: drive has over 1000 root folders. I have not experienced any problems. I have also shared the D:\Music folder and mapped it with the same drive letter X: on the other PCs so that all PCs can use a copy of the same MC library.

*For this I use a subst command in a bat file that I have in the Startup folder.

[dmp]

Sure, NTFS can easily handle what you suggest...  However, as KingSparta mentioned, you may regret it from a performance point of view.  The more folders and files you have, the slower they will display.

I organize my files into folders by genre first, then album name.  My reasoning is that you tend to run into issues with tagging and renaming programs if you use artist names as folders.  The problem is mainly with handling mixed artist albums.  The tagging program generates a seperate folder for every artist on such albums and so it makes more sense to use album names for the final folder level.

As your library grows, this approach still will eventually lead to a huge list under the genre folder, that for some may become unwieldy; however, one can easily do what benn600 suggested (that is alphabetising with a,b,c... directories) when the time comes.

If you only listen to and collect a particular genre of music, then drop the genre level of folders all together.

Cheers,
dmp

[Mr ChriZ]

Has anyone got any proof that having more folders is going
to give any performance problem?
I'd have thought on a modern computer this is going
to be so negligable it's not going to be a problem.
I'd imagine a pretty gigantic music collection could have 10,000
artists.  10,000's a pretty small number for a modern computer...

Or by performance do they mean that of the user?
Finding artists this way could be slow...
but then hey thats why we have Media Center is it not?

Additiontal note:
If it does become a problem, then using the power of Media Center to
it's full advantage you can always change it as and when you like...

[zirum]

In my collection, i have somewhere above 1300 folders. When browsing the folder, it takes some time the first opening. About 3-4 secs i'd guess. Not much, but still something...

Don't think the folder count will affect the play performance in any way.

I've got a P4 3ghz with 2 gb synced 3200DDR-ram btw. So it should do good enough.

[dmp]

In mine, some 3400 album folders in a single directory show up pretty much instantly on a P4 running at 3.6GHz.  Certaintly takes less than 3-4 seconds.  I see a lag of about 3-4 seconds when I open the same folder as a network drive over a 10mbit Lan.

Proof as to performance issues with many files?  I personally have none. 

My own experience is that number of files/folders doesn't really matter much from a machine point of view.  I have yet to notice any performance problems when dealing with my library of some 6000 albums.

Anyhow, as Mr ChriZ indicates, the power of MC makes physical file placement something of moot point.

Cheers,
dmp

[BartMan01]

I have a folder with over 6000 files/folders in it - takes about 4-5 seconds to open.

XP - NTFS
AMD 64x2 4200+ w 2GB RAM

I would still shy away from using the root folder directly.  If for no other reason than XP treats it differently (from a properties/security standpoint) than other folders.  Why not just create an 'Audio' folder and put everything in there?

[zirum]

Since some of you had so much better performance, I had to do a new test. Just now it took about 30 secs...

But I have indexing turned off, for better live performance (video filtering). Probaly some of the cause...

[Mr ChriZ]

Since some of you had so much better performance, I had to do a new test. Just now it took about 30 secs...

But I have indexing turned off, for better live performance (video filtering). Probaly some of the cause...

Could deppend also on thumbnails, one thing I forgot in my previous post.
I suspect if you've got no folder.jpg's or view a list view it's much quicker.