Long filenames and CD burning probs!

[Curley_Boy 0]

My mum wants me to backup her work stuff to CD.

 

However when I try and burn the stuff to CD (using Nero) it tells me that some of the file names are either longer than 255 characters (or have characters that aren't supported by the CD file system, ISO 9660) and directories are more than 8 paths deep.

 

The problem is she has TONS of files with many many subfolders (haven't found more than 7 deep as of yet though). I can't possibly go through them all. Does anybody know precisely WHICH charecters are not supported by the format listed above, and perhaps suggest an easy method to locate and rename files/folders that are too long or have unsupported charecters in their names.

 

Alternatively can I use a different format to ISO9660 (one that would allow me to keep my current names intact and still be readable on other PCs [98/Me/NT/XP] using FAT, FAT32, NTFS 4 and 5)?

 

Any help much appriciated I'm going spare here!!

[DosFreak 2]

Try switching to Joliet.

 

I usually just rar my files and then burn to CD.

[Tomay 0]

I found no solution to this problem. But I think It burns the files even if they are more than 255 character long. Make a test. Put a few files in directories of 8 and more, and filenames longer than 255 and burn them to see if you can read them from the burned cd. I think nero starts to complain about files beeing too long if they are longer than 64 chars.

 

You could also zip or rar the whole thing, and it even takes up less space.

[Mr.Guvernment 0]

^^^^

 

exactly what i do, just rar them up

[Jerry Atrik 0]

i just ignore that error

it still burns the file correctly

[jimf43 0]

Quote:

Try switching to Joliet.

I usually just rar my files and then burn to CD.

Joliet's a good idea, and zipping or rar is also good, but, you got to have the disk space to do it, or, a program that will directly compress and burn. Not always possible.

If anyone is interested in the Joliet spec, it's here:
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/jolspec.html

[TrueBavarian 0]

I'm not sure about the specs of the UDF disc file system but for me it works perfectly to create a UDF disc, there don't seem to be limiting restrictions when it comes to file name or directory level length.

 

One thing to keep in mind however is that you need to have a UDF reading enabled OS to read from the disk. This can either be achieved by additional drivers (Ahead has one on their homepage for all MS systems) or by OS native support like in XP.

 

Hope this helps

[JungleWriter 0]

OK, the last post on this discussion is now a year and a half old. The problem of burning long file names was not solved then. Now, have the gazillon of soft ware writers finally produced a solution, or not? I just refuse to believe ;( that in 2004 we are still limited to 64 characters per file name. (Obviously, I need more for my extensive file cabinet.)

 

Anyone, is there a program out now, that does burn file names longer than 64 characters, or that helps me to restore the original file names once I move the files from the CD back to a hard drive?

 

Help is greatly appreciated.

 

JungleWriter

[Sampson 0]

The easiest solution is not to nest the subdirectories, since the subdirectory's name then becomes part of the name of the file.