Question

I’m using ext3 and according to Wikipedia, the maximum sub directories allowed is around 32000. Currently, each user is given their own directory to upload images on the filesystem. This makes it simple to retrieve images and ease of access. the folder structure is like this:

../images/<user id>/<image>
../images/<another user id>/<image>

I don’t want to commit to a design that is doomed to fail with scalability, specifically when 32k users have upload images. While this may never be achieved, I still think it is bad practice.

Does anyone have an idea to avoid this problem? I would prefer not to use the database if possible for reasons of unnecessary queries and speed.

Answer 1

Create a subdirectory for when the previous one gets full

/images/<a>/<user id 1>/<image>
/images/<a>/<user id 2>/<image>
...
/images/<a>/<user id 32000>/<image>
/image/<b>/<user id 32001>/<image>
...