# File names too long for external harddrive



## crescere (Aug 30, 2011)

I have a Seagate Expansion external harddrive  2 TB.  It takes most of the files I am backing up from my computer except that occsionaly I get a message “The file name is too long for destination folder.”  The file name will be quite long when this happens,  and in order to copy it over I have to find the file then shorten it manually.  If the computer accepted this name why can’t the external hard drive?  Is there a way to make it universally accept all file names?


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## johnb35 (Aug 30, 2011)

Your internal is partitioned ntfs, your external is most likely partitioned fat32 and has issues with long filenames.


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## crescere (Aug 30, 2011)

Can I change or fix this?


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## johnb35 (Aug 30, 2011)

Back up your data to a different drive and then reformat it as ntfs and then transfer data back to it.  I wouldn't convert it without backing up your data in case disaster happens.


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## BlownFiveLiter (Aug 30, 2011)

John is correct, that you should probably back up the data before converting to NTFS.  If you choose to live dangerously and wish to convert to NTFS without backing up you would do this:

1. open a command prompt
2. type "convert x: /fs:ntfs" (without quotes - substitute your drive letter for x)


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