From: phlip <phlip2005@...>
Date: 2008-07-06T22:41:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Getting Folder Size

Dave Bass wrote:

> John Joyce wrote:

>> To explain it a little further... technically, even the system is
>> doing some recursion here when it shows you a folder size.
> 
> If you right-click on a large Windows folder such as My Documents and 
> select Properties (in XP at any rate) you can see the system recursing 
> through and adding up the number of bytes. In theory this figure could 
> be made available instantly if the system kept track of what was going 
> on in each folder. But presumably that would slow things down (more).

Right. In terms of transactions, a file system is a database tuned to rapidly 
read and write individual files. Stashing their intermediate sizes - into every 
directory entry in a system - would slow down every single write to every file, 
and nobody wants that.

Could the original poster attempt what they really need to do, in some other 
way? A spot-check of a limited number of file sizes should be relatively cheap...