'file names are too long to recover'

After completing the scan and choosing a destination folder to save the recovered files, the program announces that some of the files I want to recover will not be recoverable (to the folder I have indicated) because the file name is too long.

In my case there are 4700 files that fall into this category...I don't have the time to go thru and change the names of the 4700 files...what else can I do to recover these?

There's lots in the forum about this, if you scan. Essentially, try to reduce the chance of this happening by making the folder name and path you're restoring to as short as possible, i.e. c:\r or something similar.

1. Selecting C: Does not resolve the issue. Using C: simply lets you pull out more files, but not even close to all files. For example, if you try to pull files into a third subfolder on an external drive, it will tell you that it can't recover 4,700 files, but once you change the folder to C: it will tell you that it can't recover 4,000 files. The result is pretty much the same, which is you can't recover thousands of files.

2. The issue seems to be with Recuva software, other programs don't do that. Recuva pulls a great amount of files from a broken hard drive, but it can't transfer thousands of files, making the software much less useful.

If you have other suggestions, I greatly appreciate that. If the paid version does not have this problem, please let me know. Thank you.

I don't know why I typed c:\r, I should have said make the destination folder d:\r to emphasise that the recovery is to a different drive from the source drive.

The recovered files are sent to a folder elsewhere, which makes the path name longer by adding the recovery folder name to the file names. The idea is to keep the recovery folder name as short as possible.

To have 4,000+ names that are at, or close to, the file name length limit is rather unusual.

Thank you for suggestion, I will give it a try.

In terms of the 'long file name' errors, its not always the file name length that is the issue, but the long file path, which you mention. The file can be of 5 letters and still read as long name if its located within a 10th subfolder or so.

Also, this error whether long file name or long file path, seems to be more of an issue with older technology. If I transfer files to an 8 year old external drive, it gives those errors, but backing up to a new drive all the same files, didn't produce a single error.

Thanks again!