I tried to reburn win iso from this external HDD , but having minor hiccup.

I saw this dmesg error prompt:



Hence do a fsck on the partition:



What does this fsck prompt means by 1 to4 ?
1. "drop file" means what ? delete the file ?
2. rename file ? rename file name from "すいか接ぎ　熊本 植木すいか.mp4" to 9A32~1.MP4 ?
3. auto rename ? auto rename from "すいか接ぎ　熊本 植木すいか.mp4" to 9A32~1.MP4" without prompting ?
4. keep it ? does it means no change to file name ?

Does above means i got corrupted file name ? or is it just that linux does not recognize long windows filename as "proper" ?


should i do fsck in this case or i can simply ignore fsck saying that need to check with fsck (simply because linux does like long filename of windows) ?

Putting error messages into search engines is a good way of figuring out what they're about.

The error message is "Bad short file name".

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fsck+"Bad+short+file+name"

First result is a Fedora bug, second result is:
The general consensus is that FAT/NTFS filesystems are best fixed by Windows, hence the second response there.

The first response highlights that it probably doesn't matter (unless you're going to interact with that file using old software).

I suppose you meant there is nothing wrong with the hdd.. just long file name length that linux jealous of. :-)

I didn't know what to search for , hence i plugged in the whole chunk of "$sudo fsck /dev/sdd1

/2016 DEC 1 BACKUP/gardening/GRAFTING/すいか接ぎ　熊本 植木すいか.mp4
Bad short file name ( 9A32~1.MP4).
1) Drop file
2) Rename file
3) Auto-rename
4) Keep it"
into google to search and came out with all unrelated result, hence i asked here.

Can you tell me "drop file" means what ? delete the file (the programmer just like to use funny words )? I believe "keep it" simply means keep the original long file name.

Anyway, glad to know there is nothing wrong with the hdd partition.

Well there's three lessons:

1) You need to learn how to identify error messages, and how to reduce what you're putting into a search engine to keywords.

2) If your opening post says "I searched for X in search engine Y but got no results", people can provide you with better terms to search for.

3) Use DuckDuckGo before asking for help, because it doesn't profile you and give different results (beyond the stupid regional crap, but that's one click to turn off), so you can know that others looking at the same time should be seeing the the same results.


Drop is a relatively common synonym for delete, so that wouldn't surprise me.

If you feel it should be clearer, fsck is part of util-linux, which has an issue tracker where you can raise that (and highlight the lack of any clarification of the options in the man page).
(update: correcting the above, the "drop file" option comes from fsck.fat - part of dosfstools, which has its own issue tracker.)


The error is not about the standard filename, it is the SHORT (DOS 8.3) filename where the issue is. This is why the error is "Bad short file name" (and likely because it appears to start with a space).


I never said that - I am making no statements regarding whether the hdd partition is good or bad or anywhere in between.

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I see, google do profiling on individual, hence each person can have different search result even when entering the same keyword. Good to realize this.

I can't check fsck on the partition, because it gave me "bad short file name" prompts.. i can't want to keep pressing "4. keep it" for hundred times (who know) before reaching other error which needed to be fix.
Hence in this case fsck is useless to me (in this particular situation)

It's very rare that software written for Linux cannot be automated/scripted.

Looking at man fsck shows there is a "-N" option:
The same man page also highlights this important fact:
i.e. Running fsck against a FAT filesystem will use fsck.fat, and so checking man fsck.fat reveals a bunch more options, including "-a":
(This also highlights that the choice of "drop file" is part of fsck.fat, which is provided by dosfstools rather than util-linux, and thus should be the target of any issues created regarding lack of clarity/documentation.)

Thanks.
I know now fsck, fsck.vfat, fsck.fat has got so many variance. I tried using "-n" (for no change) , but still it is a scary tool to use. Rather not check it, not looking for trouble.