Just a thought, but which version of Windows are you running? And which file system - FAT32 or NTFS? I have a tingle in the back of my head which says that this is a known issue with some versions if you have a lot of files - 17,000 is the number which comes to mind - in one directory. Maybe I’m misremembering and it was 1700. Unfortunately I can’t locate it in the MS KB. Or maybe that was HPFS, not NTFS?