Windows 10 Cant rename files or copy from external hard drive.

[Cretos]

I am trying to copy music files from my external hard drive to my music folder and I get a message about file names too long or invalid. I have tried to shorten the names by renaming them, but it won't allow me. I would rather not shorten the songs names anyway. How can I get around this?

 

[Neemobeer]

If the filenames including the full path are over 260 characters you'll get that error message.

You can make a registry edit allow longer names.
How to Make Windows 10 Accept File Paths Over 260 Characters

You'll also want to make sure you have only legal characters in the file name/path
Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces - Windows applications

 

[Josephur]

Also make sure the external drive is formatted in NTFS not FAT32.

 

[Cretos]

If the filenames including the full path are over 260 characters you'll get that error message.

You can make a registry edit allow longer names.
How to Make Windows 10 Accept File Paths Over 260 Characters

You'll also want to make sure you have only legal characters in the file name/path
Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces - Windows applications

The instruction provided actually made things worse. I followed them to the letter and now I get an error code 0x80004005 now i cant transfer files at all the value is set to 1. By the way many of these files were converted from m4a and wma to mp3 and ripped using a program on Ubuntu. Does this matter?