[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmwjQzWgiD7_I3zw-_91rMRf_6qoThupis"
 nickname="Mike"
 subject="comment 10"
 date="2014-06-18T20:15:42Z"
 content="""
``git ls-files --cached | wc -l`` returns: 1882028

As far as I can tell, the largest objects in .git/objects are 65kb, there are just a bunch of them (257). Also, my repo contains 1,886,125 files and directories total, most in a single directory (after git annex add completed, that one directory contained 8.3GB of symlinks.

``git-annex add .`` just completed successfully, I am now running ``git commit -a -m added``, it is chugging away and taking its time.

Is there an obvious upper limit to the number of files or the total size of files that git annex can handle? For example, is 1 million files too many? How about 6TB? or 9TB? For this repo I think I have a little less than 2m files, and the total size of the repo is greater than 6TB. Is that too much? Should I split it into multiple repos?

I also have a question just about the utility of git-annex for this purpose. I don't need to backup this data, I just want to have it off the big hard drive and onto a bunch of small drives. I have added 3 4TB drives as remotes and I want all of the data stored on them, I will take them offline and put them in a safe. Ideally my file and directory structure will remain intact as symlinks, and then when I want to access a file in the future, I can run ``git annex get <file>``, connect the drive that git annex tells me to, and then get that file, use it, and then drop it when I am done. From all of my reading it seems like that is a good usage for git annex, but I want to check with you and see if that makes sense to you. Also, can I just run ``git annex drop --auto --numcopies=1``  to get git annex to move all of the files to my remote repositories?

Thanks for all of your help, and let me know if there are any other debug steps you would like me to run. I am still waiting for git commit to run, and for an exact repo size for you.
"""]]
