files being rejected due to filename size on backup drive

[timbo59]

I have an external drive to use as a backup to my PC and set it last night to store everything in 'My documents'. When I got up this morning everything had worked fine except for one thing - it had rejected 491 files as being too large in name for the destination. Funny enough I don't ever remember it doing that before, but this time around I'm using a new PC, even though both this one and the previous unit both had the same copies of Windows 7 on board.

Out of the 702 Gig's worth of data being backed up approx 4 Gig of it involved those 491 files that got rejected, so I obviously don't want to just ignore them. Problem is I don't know which ones they are - how do I figure out which 491 files are at issue so I can cut their names down so that they'll transfer over, and how do I know what the character limitation is in the first place? The backup drive in question is a Western Digital Elements.

 

[Rdslw]

Limit of files names is old problem
In DOS times you could not use more than 8 letters per file. That why in console files are Documen~ instead of DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS ?
there are 2 limits here on FULL PATH and on a RELATIVE PATHS.
https://serverfault.com/questions/232986/overcoming-maximum-file-path-length-restrictions-in-windows
Follow this link then copy again and choose NO OVERWRITES, should just copy the missing 4GB in the right places

 

[Rdslw]

also in general I would recommend g-zipped backups as they are immune to this kind of problems, are smaller and in general named "backup-dateDDMMYYYY" for easier management. Just remember fat32 limits for file size if you gzip this ~700GB of magic

 

[timbo59]

Sorry, are you saying that the file limit for a zipped fat32 file is 700GB? Also, I couldn't make sense of that link, as it seems to address HOW to cut the file name sizes down, rather than finding out which ones are at fault - if I went through all my files one by one looking for the culprits I'd be at it for weeks.

 

[USAFRet]

Sorry, are you saying that the file limit for a zipped fat32 file is 700GB? Also, I couldn't make sense of that link, as it seems to address HOW to cut the file name sizes down, rather than finding out which ones are at fault - if I went through all my files one by one looking for the culprits I'd be at it for weeks.

One of the MAIN problems is subfolders.
My Documents/MyMovies/Sub1/Sub2/Sub3/Sub4/SomeReallyLongFolderName/MovieBackups/Caddyshack.[1980]720p.BRRip.H264(foobar-tarfu)/Caddyshack[1980].mp4.

That whole folder chain counts.
255 characters max.

 

[timbo59]

I've been through it again, but this time I made it process each of the erroneous files to figure out which ones were the problem. It was as I thought - most of them are from my music files, specifically the classical music section, where you can get all sorts of sub folders like My Documents/Music/Classical/Classical era/Ludwig Van Beethoven/Symphonies/Symphony No. 5/Ludwig Van Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 Op. 67 - 1st movement (that's just an example which actually does fit in! The problem ones are longer.)

Anyway, I now have a list of all the problem files and can go through and change them all individually. Tedious, but it will only take a few hours.

Thanks for the help though.