Comments on: A Windows brain-teaser

By: Luke O'Malley

Luke O'Malley — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:27:30 +0000

I was intrigued by the question because it is close to a problem I am having. Running XP SP2 with the HD on my laptop using NTFS file structure and my external USB HD using FAT 32, I have trouble copying certain files from the Laptop to the External HD. Here is the reason: some of the files are in foreign languages and use diacritical marks, for example, Jose or Jos and an e with an accent on it. When I have two files that differ only because of the diacritical marks, when I try to copy them I receive the msg “Cannot create or replace . The directory or file cannot be created. By removing the diacritical marks everything is OK. Unfortunately I have a folder with about 20,000 files in it that I want to copy.

Does anyone know the solution to this problem?

Goodwill,
Luke

By: Helen

Helen — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:36:30 +0000

Thank you Ervin,

Your solution worked for me too.

By: Ervin J

Ervin J — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 03:47:37 +0000

Thank you, Gerard and Carl!

It could have been any of you, guys. A quality blog like this must have quality readers.

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:23:18 +0000

Dangit! I was close. Stupid job got in the way, so I couldn’t check the thread again for a couple of hours. Congrats, Ervin.

By: Serdar

Serdar — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:13:55 +0000

I had a feeling it was the FAT root-directory file-limit issue! Darn!

By: Ervin J

Ervin J — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:34:09 +0000

Thank you, Ed! I feel like I’ve just got an A+ prize for a B- answer.

To be honest, looking up the exact numbers would have taken a lot more time, and I was pretty tired after carrying all the food I bought at Costco tonight.

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:22:45 +0000

Ervin, you’re about 95% of the way there, which is close enough for me. The actual limit is 512 entries in the root directory on a FAT drive. Each filename and its 8.3 alias get one entry, and long filenames take up additional entries. In this case, there were four directory entries used for each file name, which meant I ran out of room at 128 files. Once I deleted a file or two and created a subfolder, I was able to move the existing files into it and then copy the rest of the files into that subfolder.

So, you’re the winner. Send me an email (ed-blog AT bott DOT com) with your mailing address and I’ll get the book out to you.

By: Gerard

Gerard — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:18:40 +0000

ahh, Ervin you just beat me. Congrats

By: Ervin J

Ervin J — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:03:18 +0000

The root directory cannot have more than X (224?) entries. I guess all your jpeg files have long file names, hence increasing the number of entries used. The solution is to put the jpegs in one or more subdirectories of the portable’s root.

By: evilkat

evilkat — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:02:48 +0000

And are the drivers for USB properly installed? Is the USB drive properly seated in the USB port THROUGHOUT the copy process?

By: jon

jon — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:58:36 +0000

Does your usb port work properly?

By: evilkat

evilkat — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:56:32 +0000

Hmmm. I wonder if windows caches the files its copies to the Flash drive some place before writing it directly to the drive? If it does, and the cache runs out of space due to some time out on the flash drive then that could cause an unable to create_file perhaps? Although I suppose that should be an out of space error.

The other thing to look at is since it’s always failing a 3rd of the way through the copy process, it might be worthwhile trying to figure out which file it’s trying to copy when it’s failing.

Finally, maybe the USB drive is corrupted? Can you copy any other files over to it? I mean maybe it has a bad sector or something Wait, does Flash based storage even HAVE sectors? That’s what used to happen with bad floppies back in the day.

By: RonV

RonV — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:52:20 +0000

Reformat flash drive from fat16 to fat32

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:48:11 +0000

Nice guesses, everyone, but there’s a simple explanation and a simple answer that need to be expressed first.

Evilkat, yes, I was able to copy roughly a third of the files before I got that error message.

By: evilkat

evilkat — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:39:51 +0000

Since you never specified if you copied ANY of the files over at all, let’s try the SIMPLEST solution first

Do you have some sort of ‘read only’ option set on your USB drive which prevents XP from writing to it in the first place?