Copying files to XP

andrewlondonandrewlondon
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hi, i was wondering if anyone could help me. I want to transfer my music collection over to my windows server, the problem is, it keeps telling me the filenames are too long. I'm using Windows XP so there shouldn't be a problem with the length of the filenames.



Is there anyway to turn this notification off and just copy the files anyway?



Thanks in advance

Andrew

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    project2501project2501 Posts: 433member
    With FAT16 your filename is limited to 8.3 and with other windows formats to 255, same as HFS+ so unless you are for some odd reason using FAT 16 there should not be problems with filename size, those errors are propably caused by something else like different character encoding, because HFS+ uses unicode and FAT32 uses systems encoding, just a guess though.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    andrewlondonandrewlondon Posts: 83member
    I'm using Windows XP so theres no way i'm using FAT 16. I'm actually running NTFS at the moment, i should have mentioned this in my original post.



    The problems are being caused by invalid characters. I've got a list of invalid characters but i'm trying to transfer around 9000 files so i'm not going to sit there and remove the invalid characters from each file.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    hmmfehmmfe Posts: 79member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by AndrewLondon

    I'm using Windows XP so theres no way i'm using FAT 16. I'm actually running NTFS at the moment, i should have mentioned this in my original post.



    The problems are being caused by invalid characters. I've got a list of invalid characters but i'm trying to transfer around 9000 files so i'm not going to sit there and remove the invalid characters from each file.



    That could be it. Remember that while file names in Windows can be 256 characters long, the total length of the "path+filename" can be a max of 259 characters (that is c\, plus 256 character file name = 259). So, if you have a long file name and a long path this could be your issue as well.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    andrewlondonandrewlondon Posts: 83member
    Does anyone know of a way to automatically remove invalid characters from file names?
  • Reply 5 of 5
    hmmfehmmfe Posts: 79member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by AndrewLondon

    Does anyone know of a way to automatically remove invalid characters from file names?



    R-Name should do the trick, it has a batch find-replace command. I've heard that it plays heck with Spotlight though, so you should probably copy the files to a different folder first, then run R-Name, then copy to XP.



    http://www.download.com/R-Name/3000-...ml?tag=lst-3-3
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