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I am trying to back up my cloud [desktop application] [sugar sync, dropbox] to a western digital [i have 500gb,1T and 2T] Somewhere i can't continue as it says that the file name is too long!? I can skip and go further but i discovered that many thousands of files may not be backed up this way. The suggestion of western digital to change the file name is nearly silly as this would mean to find every file and may take whole days if not weeks. Do you have any suggestion?? May it be in not to technical language? thanks a lot

harold bueno de mesquta
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  • Please note that for Windows the file name is not just “file1.smth” but instead Y:\folder1\folder2\folder3\folder4\ file1.smth”. You can just move “file123.smth” form “folder4” to “folder1”. In this case Windows will see the file as only “ Y:\folder1\ file1.smth” which is significantly shorter. For more information have a look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx – Techpumpkin_WD Dec 31 '14 at 10:49

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How are you backing up the files? When I've used the Microsoft Windows copy command, I've frequently encountered that problem when using that utility to copy files to an external USB drive. But, if you use an application designed specifically for performing backups you should not encounter that problem. There are many free and commercial backup applications for Microsoft Windows systems. Alternatively, you could shorten the directory path by renaming directories or moving subdirectories up a level or two to shorten the file path as suggested in the previously posted link to On Windows 7, how do I find all my files whose filenames are too long, which should be a less onerous process than trying to rename thousands of files.

Community
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moonpoint
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I encountered the same problem earlier. This error occurs if the file path and its name is very long. So we can shorten the name of folders. The wise solution is to try to shorten the name of the uppermost level folder (in a series of nested folders), because it is included in greater number of paths. So we can accomplish this task without loosing too much time. e.g. we have these: 

D:\my attempt to get more scores on Superuser.com\answering questions\blah blah\direction.PDF
D:\my attempt to get more scores on Superuser.com\ask great questions\how to.docx

So at first, you should do this: 

D:\SuperuserScores\answering questions\blah blah\direction.PDF
D:\SuperuserScores\ask great questions\how to.docx

Then if you have enough time, do this: 

D:\SuperuserScores\answering\blah blah\direction.PDF
D:\SuperuserScores\asking\how to.docx

You can also zip some folders containing long path, so you have a zipped file with a short name instead of a long path.

living being
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