long filename glitch in vegas 5d + xp pro sp2 – error report deciphering help please

[Simon]

hi,

an update…

found this from the microsoft site dated jan 2005:
————————————————————
NTFS Naming Conventions
File and directory names can be up to 255 characters long, including any extensions. Names preserve case, but are not case sensitive. NTFS makes no distinction of filenames based on case. Names can contain any characters except for the following: ? ” / \ < > * | :

Currently, from the command line, you can only create file names of up to 253 characters.
————————————————————

i’ve counted my longest filenames and they’re in the 200 chracter range, not 240 or 250+ range.

please, if anyone has experience with this, let me know your findings. it is really disconcerting.

i’ll try to keep my filenames shorter, though i seem to be within microsoft’s NTFS safe range.

so then, is this a Vegas thing – something else?

thanks again,
simon

[Valvehead]

I’m really suspicious of Maxblast. I used it a few years ago with a 40GB Maxtor drive in an old 200Mz HP computer. Its IDE controller wouldn’t work beyond 8GB so I tried the Maxblast software. It worked fine for a while until strange problems started occuring. File creation dates would randomly change, and whole folders would become unreadable. I then bought a Promise PCI IDE controller and reformatted the drive without Maxblast. It worked just fine from then on.

The only reason to use Maxblast would be on an older computer whose IDE controller doesn’t support larger drives. Since a PCI IDE (or SATA) controller card doesn’t cost much, there really isn’t a good reason to trust your valuable data to a software workaround.

—
Dave

[Simon]

Hi Valvehead,

Thank you so much for the information.

The maxtor 250gb SATA drive in question is presently hooked up directly to the motherboard’s onboard primary (it has two) SATA channel. The motherboard is a DFI nF2 U400SG-AGF.

There are no SATA controller cards in this system at the moment.

If I’m reading you correctly, you are suggesting that I buy and install a SATA controller card to ensure drive stability and data integrity? Yes?

Is there a way to find these “lost” or misplaced files – I am still hopefull they’re in the system somewhere, perhaps under diffrent names?

I suppose I should transfer whatever files are there on another drive or burn them onto disk and reformat the 250gb SATA Maxtor drive…

many thanks,
simon

[Simon]

hi Valvehead, and all interested others who may be of help,

i copied the entire lot of these wav files (accessible & inaccessible) to ‘MY DOCUMENTS’ folder on my system drive and the ‘LOST’ ones magically reappeared, albeit under different/reassigned names.

all are now accessible and seem to work fine – and i am able to rename them, but will hold off until further input.

out of a total of 280 wav files, 127 were reassigned names! also know that there were a couple of word files in there that this also happened to.

here’s an example of the kind of filename i originally started with:
1997 february 27 SIDE B 00m00s – LAID BACK GROOVY FUNKY BASS LINE-MELODY

this is the kind of filename i’m getting now:
SIDEA1~1 or SIDEA2~1

what’s going on here? what should i do?

really perplexed,
simon

[Simon]

forgot to add that the original inaccessible files on my media drive are still inaccessible…

all advice and input still very welcome,
simon

[Valvehead]

I’m not an expert in computers (though I did build my own). I will try to help you as much as I can.

I’m not saying that using an add-on SATA adapter will inherently make your system more stable. I recommended the add-on card as a possibly more secure option than Maxblast simply because it’s what worked for me. Not knowing your system specs I wrongly assumed that it was an older system requiring the use of Maxblast to bypass the capacity limitation. From the info I can find on Maxtor’s site about Maxblast, it seems that it’s only necessary to use it if you actually encounter the 137GB limit. I’m only saying that I don’t trust Maxblast because of my own personal experience with it.

At what point did you discover that you were limited to 137GB? Did the BIOS not recognize the capacity correctly or lock up on booting? Your motherboard is fairly new, and if the BIOS and chipset drivers are up to date you shouldn’t be limited there. Go to the DFI website to see if there are any updated BIOS and driver downloads for your motherboard.

If the BIOS recognized the drive properly, did the drive not show up properly in windows? To see the capacity that Windows recognizes go to Control Panel>Adminstartive Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. The bottom chart shows the physical drives with their total capacities in the left column. What version of Windows XP are you using? I believe that Service Pack 1 added support for drives beyond 137GB.

Did you set the Cylinder Limitation Jumper (CLJ) on the drive? This is only for older systems and will unnecessarily limit the capacity of the drive.

As far as recovering your current files, you already did what I would have recommended. If copying the files to another drive doesn’t make them readable, then you will probably need to seek help from a professional data recovery service.