too many files....

I seem to have gotten myself into a bit of a bind...

I have a website with lots of pictures. At the moment, some 5,000+ and growing at the rate of about 300-500/month. Right now they take up 1.7 GB.

The problem is that access to those files is getting slower and slower as the number of pictures gets larger. The server ain't exactly the fastest, and the drives, while SCSI RAID5, are old and run at fairly slow speeds.

Upgrading the hardware is not an option unless someone donates a bunch of equipment.

Dividing the files into groups and directories is also not an option; they are used in a website and all of the picture URLs are stored in an SQL database. Dividing them now would be a huge nightmare.....

So... The pictures are stored on an ext3 filesystem. They range from small (10K) to moderate (1MB) in size. Is there some way to optimize this for faster access? Can I use a different filesystem? Set some options for ext3? Tell linux to keep those pics in cache? Add more ram? I am searching for things I can do on the cheap; this is my personal server and money is tight at the moment.

The hardware is a dual PIII 1Ghz HP server, 1 GB RAM, 5 SCSI 36 GB drives in a softRAID5 array (mostly 10K Seagates; there may be a 15K Cheetah in there).

Thanks,

--Yan
.

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