Assumptions: you wish to split a folder containing thousands of files totaling up to more than 700MB into individual directories of 700 MB each - ready for burning onto multiple CDs.

On Linux, you can use a script like dsplit or dirsplit - part of the genisoimage (on Debian / Ubuntu). If you prefer Windows / Wine, you can use an application like Folder Axe.

Examples

Test scenario

# Create 2000 files of 1MB (sparse) each. mkdir allimages && cd $_ for i in {1..2000} do dd if=/dev/zero of=image$i.jpg bs=1 count=0 seek=1M done 

I now have 2000 files (2GB) that I want to split across 3 directories.

$ ls -la | tail -rw-rw-r-- 1 cmihai cmihai 1048576 Dec 4 12:54 image992.jpg -rw-rw-r-- 1 cmihai cmihai 1048576 Dec 4 12:54 image993.jpg 

Install dirsplit. On ubuntu, this is included in the genisoimage package.

$ apt-cache search dirsplit genisoimage - Creates ISO-9660 CD-ROM filesystem images $ sudo apt-get install genisoimage 

dirsplit

# Get usage / help dirsplit -H # Dry run (get list of changes): dirsplit --no-act --size 700M --expmode 1 allimages/ # Actual run: $ dirsplit --size 700M --expmode 1 allimages/ Building file list, please wait... Calculating, please wait... .................... Calculated, using 3 volumes. Wasted: 105254 Byte (estimated, check mkisofs -print-size ...) # List of files per directory can be found in catalog files you can use with mkisofs. $ ls allimages vol_1.list vol_2.list vol_3.lis 

dsplit

Note: by default the files are hard-linked to the source

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mayanez/dsplit/master/dsplit.py $ python dsplit.py -s 700 -v allimages/ out/ Volume 01: allimages/: 700 files (700.00 MB). Total: 700.00 MB (700 files, 1 dirs) Volume 02: allimages/: 700 files (700.00 MB). Total: 700.00 MB (700 files, 1 dirs) Volume 03: allimages/: 600 files (600.00 MB). Total: 600.00 MB (600 files, 1 dirs) 

Gotchas:

• I've used sparse files in my test - you'll want to check how dsplit / dirsplit handle sparse files, hardlinks and softlinks.