"The Path Is Too Deep" Error in XP
 

After using my external (USB-2) hard drive many times in recent weeks to back up files on my two internal hard drives, all of a sudden I can't back up directories with large numbers of files without it stopping with a "The Path Is Too Deep" error. Anyone ever heard of this and how to solve it?

I tried looking it up on the Microsoft site and the explanation I get there is that there are too many characters in the directory name string, but both source and target are top-level directories with only like 20 character names (I can see perhaps if I was sourcing or targeting a very deep directory with lengthy names along the way, but I haven't had this kind of trouble in the past).

Of course, I could call Microsoft, but I'll be charged by the minute even if I'm discussing something THEY fucked up in their software, so I thought I'd try looking for someone who's run into this and fixed it before.

What do you have to say?

Never heard of it.

might be something with your usb hd

It's a strange error. I also get it sometimes when I transfer files from my windows harddrive to a samba share on my linux server. I know it is not because the path is infact, too deep... And I know samba is setup fine because I've installed samba in much more challenging situations, so it must be something with XP :ak47:

If you do happen to find out what it is, make sure you leave a message :thumbsup