How does XP order files on the hard drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Noel S Pamfree
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Noel S Pamfree

I had always thought that no matter when you saved files on a hard disk
under XP that they would be listed in ASCII order in the directory (once it
was refreshed). I think I forgot that the length of the file name might
affect this.

A friend wants so show some photographs in a particular order so I told him
to change the file names to something like a001.jpg, a002.jpg etc. so that
they are in the order he wants to show them. However he says that having
done that and burned them onto a CD they are showing in a different order!

Can anyone tell me exactly how a pc running under windows looks for
pictures - or perhaps refer me to a suitable website.

Thanks,

Noel
 
Noel S Pamfree said:
I had always thought that no matter when you saved files on a hard disk
under XP that they would be listed in ASCII order in the directory (once it
was refreshed). I think I forgot that the length of the file name might
affect this.

A friend wants so show some photographs in a particular order so I told
him
to change the file names to something like a001.jpg, a002.jpg etc. so that
they are in the order he wants to show them. However he says that having
done that and burned them onto a CD they are showing in a different order!

Can anyone tell me exactly how a pc running under windows looks for
pictures - or perhaps refer me to a suitable website.

Thanks,

Noel
Click to expand...
The files can be anywhere on the disk. As I understand NTFS, XP searches
the MFT for the next available file header and loads the file in the next
available disk sector(s). Thus, a group of files could be spread out quite
widely or they could be closely grouped together.

However, when you get a list of files in a folder, they are listed in
lexical order, and this list has no relationship to the location on disk.
You must be careful about trying to get such a list because the XP utilities
may not present the list as you intended. For instance, suppose you had
files call 1.jpg through 20.jpg on your disk. The listing will show as
1.jpg, 10.jpg, 2.jpg, 20.jpg, etc. Of course, you circumvent this behavior
by giving the files names with leading zero characters so that the listing
becomes 01.jpg, 02.jpg, etc.

Perhaps your friend has run into this behavior..

Jim
 
Bill in Co. said:
I thought this was already answered?
Click to expand...
It may have for all I know. This question appears almost as frequently as
the one about
the read only attribute (as reported by Explorer anyway) for folders.
Jim
 
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