Thursday, July 6, 2017

windows - Is there any file check summing software which deals correctly with deep paths?

I have been looking for software which will checksum and verify/compare NTFS volumes with deep paths on Windows, and failing verification on every one I've tried. I've even tried writing my own python script and run into the same problems.


The problems start when files end up with paths which are more than 256 characters. This is bad enough on the primary drive, but once these files have been backed up and are even deeper on the backup filesystem it gets even worse. For example, my python program, ExactFile (suggested here), md5deep and HashMyFiles will all happily hash


D:\My Music\CDs\Bach, Johann Sebastian\The Art of Fuge _ Musical Offering (Sir Neville Marriner)\Bach, Johann Sebastian+The Art Of Fuge _ Musical Offering (Sir Neville Marriner, CD 1)+09+Contrapunctus 7, A 4, Per Augmentationem Et Diminutionem.mp3

since it is only 247 characters, but when it comes to verify it against the backup, none of these programs are able to open the file:


W:\WD SmartWare.swstor\XYZZY\Volume.1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef0123\My Music\CDs\Bach, Johann Sebastian\The Art of Fuge _ Musical Offering (Sir Neville Marriner)\Bach, Johann Sebastian+The Art Of Fuge _ Musical Offering (Sir Neville Marriner, CD 1)+09+Contrapunctus 7, A 4, Per Augmentationem Et Diminutionem.mp3

as it's full path is now 317 characters.


Microsofts fciv even crashes when having to deal with such long file paths.


Overall, this makes it very difficult to verify that the backups have been successful.


I'm sure I can't be the only person that needs to calculate, verify and compare hashes of files in deep directory structures. It seems crazy that NTFS can support file paths up to 32k in length, yet so many utilities which aim to audit those filesystems seem unable to cope with such valid filepaths.


Can anyone verify that there are any tools which actually support hashing, verifying and comparing file hashes of files on Windows with long paths?

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