31 character file name limit?

[BabaG]

is there a 31 character limit to filenames in osx (using 10.4.8)?
just encountered this on a drive which is set up as an external
sata drive. it's a striped pair and is being made available to a
windows box to share.

the issue cropped up on the mac itself, though. tried to write a
file longer than 31 char from the mac and it got truncated.

thanks,
BabaG

 

[SC68Cal]

What is the drive formatted as? FAT32?

 

[Sherman Homan]

If I remember right, FAT32 allows 255 characters but that includes the total character count of the path. Also, HFS formatted Mac drives are limited to 31 characters for a file name as seen in the Finder. One of the reasons that HFS+ was created.

 

[MisterMe]

is there a 31 character limit to filenames in osx (using 10.4.8)? ...

This is a limit imposed by certain Carbon apps. Office v.X has this restriction. It is not OS-wide, however. Office 2004 does not have the restriction.

 

[BabaG]

the file was saved with final cut. current or next to current version.
not at the box at the moment but i assume it's formatted hfs or hfs+.
as i said originally, it's a stripe set. doing video so never would have
used fat32. don't recall the setup procedure. 10.4.8 system. most
likely hfs+. don't recall how the fs is chosen in options. would it be
easy to make the mistake between hfs and hfs+?

thanks,
BabaG

 

[mkrishnan]

the file was saved with final cut. current or next to current version.

It's not a Carbon thing then -- but you didn't answer the other questions....

1) What is the disk format?

2) Is the drive mounted directly on that computer using eSATA or FW or USB, or is it being accessed through AFP or Samba? Samba also has some limitations, I think, in terms of filename lengths.

I'm guessing this is an issue related to #2... see if you can acquire this disk using AFP instead of Samba?

 

[BabaG]

thanks mrkrishnan. sorry, thought i covered the mounting question
in the original post. it's an external box hooked up by sata directly
to the mac. samba is being used to make the drives available to
an xp box but i don't think that means samba is being used for internal
work within the mac itself, which this was.

i don't know what afp is. (america's funniest processors?)

oh yeah, the external drives are plugged in via a sonnet card which
provides four sata ports (e4p card, maybe?).

i'll be at the machine later today and will provide answers with
regard to the formatting questions at that time.

thanks again,
BabaG

 

[mkrishnan]

I think I'm understanding you now... okay, so the drives are hooked up via eSATA to the E4P, which creates a "hardware" RAID volume, right? And that hardware RAID volume is automatically mounted whenever you boot the Mac with the drives plugged in? And the Mac serves it via Samba / Windows File Sharing to the PC? (AFP is Apple File Protocol... it's the Macs-only protocol for sharing volumes over a network).

What format does the RAID have according to Disk Utility?

 

[BabaG]

am at the box now. all drives in the external box are formatted
"Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." for clarity's sake, they are not
in a hardware raid config. they are in a jbod setup, the e4p card
acting as additional ports. there are a total of five drives in he
external box. two are on port a, two on port b, one on port c,
with port d being open still. the pairs on ports a and b are each
striped via osx, the port a pair appearing as "1TB_Raid-00", and
the port b pair appearing as "1TB_Raid-01."

thanks,
BabaG