On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Daniel Rodriguez <drod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, if you are going to that, put it on FAT32, you may want to remember
> this; Even though you file names are 8.3 format, this is only partially
> true. FAT32 allowws for 255 characters for a file name. The caveat to that,
> is, every 9th character space in that name has to be a period "." and every
> 13th character has to be a "/".
>
> it should look something like this
>
> C:\thisisat.est\toshowh.ow\touselon.gfi\lenamesi.nfa\t32\filename.ext
Um... huh? Are you sure are about that? :)
In a FAT filesystem, each directory entry consists of an 11
character field for the file name, plus other metadata (starting
cluster number, logical file size, modified date, etc.).
The traditional file name uses the first 8 characters of the field
as the base name, and the last 3 characters as the extension. The
separator dot is implied and is not stored. Unused characters in each
portion are padded with spaces (ASCII 32). The base name must contain
at least one character; the extension can be blank.
VFAT is what introduced long file names on FAT filesystems. The 8.3
short name is stored as before, and is mandatory. One can optionally
also have an LFN associated with a given 8.3 named file. The LFN
portion is stored in additional directory entries, which are
constructed in a way that makes them invalid for DOS. To the best of
my knowledge, there are no particular requirements for dots or length
components.
The root directory is special, and is defined by data in the boot
record (AKA "superblock"). All other directories are simply files,
pointed to from other directory entries. So each path component
(characters between backslashes) is just a file name. If a path
component is an LFN it follows those rules; if a path component is an
8.3 short name it follows those rules.
I just tested this on a 256 MB USB flash drive, under XP Pro SP3:
ADM> CD E:
E:\really long name\...x.y.z.w.x.v.d\a\b\c\d\1234567890abcdef
ADM> CHKDSK E:
The type of the file system is FAT.
FAT32 simply increases the cluster size field from 16 bits (FAT16)
to 32 bits. (Well, it also makes the root directory a regular file,
instead of a fixed table outside the regular filesystem.) The
directory format is unchanged.
VFAT can be applied to FAT16 or FAT32.
-- Ben
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
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