Any issues about burning long filenames in Nero? (or any burning software)

[superboyac]

I know that in the default setting, Nero will warn you when burning really long filenames, and will actually bring up a dialog to truncate the names and such.  Now, I don't know much about all this stuff about ISO and Joliet standards, but is it really a big deal if I set Nero so that it will just allow me to burn long filenames?  To help you guys offer me advice, let me just say that if it's a matter of compatability, I don't really care.  For example, if the only reason not to burn long filenames is because I won't be able to read the disc in Windows 95 or something like that, I don't care.  I'm either going to read the discs from Windows XP or the next more recent version, so it doesn't really matter to me.

I ask because it seems like all burning software make an issue about it, but it seems like I have no problem with really long filenames when they're on my hard drive, so why should it matter if it's the same on the burned media?  As always, thanks for the advice.

[nudone]

i've used long file names for years. can't remember any problems - not even at other peoples computers when i take my cds to them.

[mouser]

the only trouble is, if i remember correctly, at least once in the past, i had 2 long filenames which had same beginings.  result was a cd with 2 identically seeming filenames on it - one of which could not be retrieved for this reason.  it may also cause trouble if its truncating a directory name, so be wary.

[superboyac]

mouser, when you say it couldn't be retrieved, do you mean you tried retrieving it from the same operating system you burned it from?  Because, if they were able to exist on the hard drive without any problems, why couldn't it be retrieved from the cd (assuming the OS was the same)?

[mouser]

the problem was that when the truncation occurred there were two files on the cd with the same name in the same directory, so the OS could only open 1 of them - the other was inaccessible.

[superboyac]

Oh, I think I understand.  You're saying the files were truncated before burning it on the cd.  So if I don't truncate and just burn the full filenames, then I should be fine, right?

[kimmchii]

CD burning hell

[Hirudin]

One thing you can do, if the names really matter to you, is RAR (or ZIP) all the files before burning. You could even make them a self-extracting archive. The RAR will preserve all the filenames when you de-compress it.

Another thing that might be worth doing, is create a batch file that will rename the files back to their original names after copying them off the CD.

Coding snack idea: create a program for writing CDs with long filenames. The program would scan all the files to be written, rename the ones with filenames that are too long, and create a batch file that would return the filenames to their originals at a later time. To make it easier to burn the files; the program could create an ISO, or maybe somehow transport them into nero after the renaming is done.

[nudone]

good point, Hirudin, i've used the rar method a couple of times for stubbornly long paths with too many directories.

[mouser]

i agree with hirudin - if you have to burn files that might be too long, just compress them with some zip or rar tool first, and burn that archive file, then it doesnt matter if the filename of the archive gets truncated, becase it will recover the original filename when you unpack it.

[superboyac]

aargh!  I've thought about raring the files, but the way I use these files would make it a hassle.  You see, I'm talking about backing up mp3 files.  I'll explain my process and see if there are any suggestions:

First, I have one directory per artist, and inside the directory, all of the files are listed.  So there is only really one directory, no subdirectory for albums or anything, because of the way I name my files, which is "artist - album - track number - title", so the files sort themselves alphabetically.

Before burning the files, I look through the files in Tag & Rename, which highlights all the files that are longer than the joliet (or whatever) standard, and I usually truncate those albums by reducing the album title to its acronym.  Then, I burn the cd.

I'd like to NOT have to go through the step to manually truncate all the files.  I don't want the files truncated at all, and furthermore, I don't want to zip or rar it, because after burning the files, I pass the dvd to MP3 Collector to catalog the songs.  And when I later go to retrieve the files, I'd rather not have to go through the whole unarchiving bit.

I read kimmchi's link about burning hell, and some of the people mentioned some of the problems related to long filenames may be related to harware issues.  That worries me.  If it was just a matter of OS compatibility, it wouldn't bother me.  Like I said, I don't care if I can't read the disc in a Windows 98 machine.  As long as I can read it in my current XP machine, and whatever next Windows version is in the future.  I mean, I assume the next Windows will be able to read any file from Windows XP.  In other words, I'm not really interested in backwards compatibilty, which seems to be the main issue when burning long filenames (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Here's a more general question...is the primary reason for the long filename issues due to backwards OS compatability issues and nothing more?  Is this whole thing just so that we can read files on older machines?  For me, that would be silly, because in all my life, I have never needed to go and read something in an older machine.  If this is true, please let me know so I can free myself of this unnecessary restriction forever!

[mouser]

i know there are alternate cd burning modes/formats in nero (UDF?), maybe some dont have this filename limit..