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Re: Windows Filesystem is Broken

  • Subject: Re: Windows Filesystem is Broken
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@schestowitz.com>
  • Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:42:55 +0100
  • Newsgroups: uk.comp.os.win2000
  • References: <d4en17$1q4m$1@godfrey.mcc.ac.uk> <xn0e1domm2jlt3001@news.individual.net>
  • User-agent: KNode/0.7.2
Jeff Gaines wrote:

> On 24/04/2005 Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> 
>> More annoyingly, I virtually spent 3 days trying to make a backup
>> from one Windows machine to another. It turned out that transfer
>> protocols do not cater for paths exceeding a certain size (what the
>> heck??). This never ever happened on old distributions of Linux that
>> I use.
>> 
>> Can anybody advise? Am I being harsh? Windows has cost me a lot of
>> time, so how can I not rant about it? The new Microsoft mantra is "It
>> just works", but quite frankly, it often doesn't.
>> 
>> Roy
> 
> 
> MAX_PATH is defined in the Windows API as 256 and is the maximum length
> of a full path to a file (including its name and extension).

Why isn't that common knowledge? And where is standardisation?

> It seems though that it is possible to create a file that exceeds this
> limit, goodness knows how. A solution is to rename some of the
> directories on the path to a single letter until you get back under the
> limit - not something you want to do every day.

Yes, but here is my problem... like you suggest, it's not something I want
to do every day.

Once every 2 weeks I back up 3+ GB of data by transferring from one
hard-drive to another. This requires several hours to complete and takes
place while I'm away. I can never know which new locations are 'too long'
and it might take hours until an error is flagged. If this occurs, I need
to retry the following day, which means another day without my laptop.

> As you use Linux perhaps you could mount the offending drive under
> Linux and sort it out?

I am actually waiting for my 5.5 year-old laptop to die so that I can buy a
different machine which is Windows-free. Honestly, no offence towards
Windows; it is just being a constant pain and yet so many people use it.

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com

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