fat32 characters

doralsoral · 04-25-2007, 09:33 AM

Ive noticed that when copying files (mostly my mp3s) to an external drive that is formatted with fat32, it doesn't like question marks or other funky characters. Usually i just format the drive reiserfs because i hardly use windows at all but id like to be able to share these files between windows and linux. Is there something in the kernel that doesn't allow this that i can change or am i SOL.

michaelk · 04-25-2007, 01:19 PM

My first swag is that this is just a file naming issue.
Valid filename characters for FAT32 AFAIK are A-Z,0-9 and ~!@#$%^&()_-{},.=[]`' and a space. So "?;:/\+ are invalid but if other characters are having problems then I would not know on which side the problem might lie. It might be that the vfat module only allows 8.3 FAT characters which does not include +,=[].

doralsoral · 04-25-2007, 02:46 PM

No its just those characters but i was wqondering if there was a way to make it allow those characters because i have a couple thousand songs and i have no idea which ones have ? in them so i don't want to go through my whole collection just to rename a few songs.

michaelk · 04-25-2007, 03:07 PM

Nothing you can change in linux that would make it compatable in windows.
I also forgot that *|<>! are also invalid.

BTW Thats what makes a computer so handy i.e. the ability to do tasks like searching for a needle in a haystack....