Hi, After talking with te customer, I finnaly managed to convince him for using the first characters of the hash as directory names. Now I'm in doubt about the following options: a) Using directory 4 levels /c/2/a/4/ (200 files per directory) and mysql with a hash->filename table, so I can get teh file name from the hash and then I can directly access it (I first query mysql for the hash of the file, and the I read the file). b) Using 5 levels without mysql, and making a dir listing (due to technical issues, I can't only know an approximate file name, so I can't make a direct access here), match the file name and then read it. The issue here is that I would have 16^5 leave directories (more than a million). I could also make more combinations of mysql/not mysql and number of levels. What do you think it would give the best performance in ext3? Thanks. _________________________________________________________________ Invite your mail contacts to join your friends list with Windows Live Spaces. It's easy! http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us