[korekara]

recently I had too get a new hard drive for my laptop because the old one was bad. now I'm working on transferring files from the old one to the new one (it's plugged in through a usb port). most of them copy my files fine, but every so often I'll get one that doesn't copy because of "path too deep" error. most of these files I just re-download, but some of them I can't and I really don't want to lose them. Is there any way around the path too deep error, so that I can transfer these files?

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Hi there

It sounds like that error message it saying those files are nested too deeply. In other words, there are too many sub-folders.

You should be able to get round this by opening the drive you are copying files FROM, in Windows Explorer. Locate the files that you aren't able to copy. Select the files, then see if you can cut & paste them to the root of that drive. From there you should be able to transfer them from the root to the other drive.

[Samm]

Hi there

It sounds like that error message it saying those files are nested too deeply. In other words, there are too many sub-folders.

You should be able to get round this by opening the drive you are copying files FROM, in Windows Explorer. Locate the files that you aren't able to copy. Select the files, then see if you can cut & paste them to the root of that drive. From there you should be able to transfer them from the root to the other drive.

[korekara]

hmm. I tried moving it directly to E: and copying to C:, with no subfolders. It moved out of the subfolders fine but it still refused to copy over to the new hard drive. Eh.

[Samm]

Are you copying it to the root of the C drive or to a folder on the C drive?

[korekara]

I tried doing it both ways. It gets up to a certain point and then it stops and sits there for awhile, and then I finally get the path too deep error.

Well, most of the ones that do this are recoverable, so if I have to give up the few that aren't as lost forevers, I can.

[Samm]

OK. The only other thing I can suggest is renaming the folders to shorter names. The 'path too deep' error typically occurs because the path name (e.g e:\folder1\folder2\...\filename.doc) contains more than 255 characters. Renaming the folders which have long file names should resolve the problem.

[korekara]

I generally keep pretty short folder names, but I'll try that too. Thanks :D

[Kemasa]

If you really want to try to get the files, you could try downloading Knoppix and creating a live CD and see if you can access the files that way. It may not have the same issues.

[korekara]

it depends; what's a live cd? If it requires the use of my cd-rom drive, that's a no-go, because that doesn't work right now.

[Samm]

Another possible idea....
If any of the files which you are having the trouble with, are under 1.4MB in size, then locate one of the files in My Computer, right click & select 'Send to Floppy A:'. Make sure you have a blank floppy disk inserted obviously.

[korekara]

Eh-heh... My laptop didn't come with a floppy drive. But that did give me an idea; I think I'll try uploading the files to my website and then downloading them on the new hard drive. Since the files themselves are perfectly fine, it should probably work.

[Samm]

Yeah, give it a go & let us know what happens

[korekara]

yes, it does work, for small files at least :)

Edited by korekara, 15 January 2006 - 12:54 PM.

[Samm]

Cool