Copying Files with Invalid Characters from CD

Question

Recently I was asked to talk to a group about some work I did 20 years ago. I've had to go to backup CDs to get content. The company worked on Macs and many of the filenames have illegal characters in them. For example there's a file named cos2r<sin3theta.tiff.

When I try to copy these files I get an error saying, "The file name you specified is not valid or too long. Specify a different file name." I can't get past that.

Does anyone know of a way I can copy them?

Updates I'm on Windows 10, but I also tried on Windows XP. The CD file system is CDFS

(1) What version of Windows are you using? (2) What character(s) in ``cos2r`` are illegal? Give a better example. (3) What have you tried? Do not respond in comments; [edit] your question to make it clearer and more complete. — G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica', Oct 05 '17 at 20:05
Repeat of https://superuser.com/questions/31587/how-to-force-windows-to-rename-a-file-with-a-special-character — DrMoishe Pippik, Oct 05 '17 at 20:12
DrMoishe Pippik - the answer to the 31587 question was to use Linux to copy the file. I don not have access to a box with Linux installed. — ITGirl, Oct 05 '17 at 20:14
@ITGirl, there are lots of other solutions there, but you don't need Linux installed anywhere. The most popular distros have a live session demo that lets you evaluate it without installation, and then install it if you want to. Just download the ISO and burn it to a DVD or flash drive. You can then use the live session to perform tasks like this. — fixer1234, Oct 05 '17 at 21:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 05 '17 at 21:15

0

Windows actually still maintains the old 8-dot-3 naming scheme as an alternative to the long filename. This may allow you to access rename or manipulate files with problematic characters.

At the windows command line, you can identify the 8.3 name using the /X parameter for dir. In my user profile, for example, Saved Games folder is SAVEDG~1.

So dir /X cos*.*, check the short-format filename, and then ren {short name} {new legal name}

answered Oct 05 '17 at 21:15

Yorik

4,166
1
11
16

This is actually addressed in "31587" linked in the comments, but not the accepted answer and you need to scroll a little. – Yorik Oct 05 '17 at 21:16

Alberto Martinez · Answer 2 · 2017-10-05T21:21:24.130

You should be able to do it creating an ISO from the CD and then using an ISO editor/extractor for renaming/extracting the files:

First create and ISO file from the CD, for example using the free ImgBurn (beware of misleading ads, the real download links are those name Mirror X):
Then use an ISO editor/extractor, there are a lot of ISO extractors but the important thing is using one that allows renaming files, either in the ISO or when extracting them, I used the free WinISO 5.3 (note that the free version is only 5.3, in the ZIP there are two installers, use WinISO53.exe and the register with the key provided in readme.txt), I created a test ISO with invalid characters and WinISO processed it fine:

First use Rename with the files that have invalid characters and then use Extract... to save that files to a folder. Another option is renaming all the files with invalid characters, save the ISO and burn it in another CD or use it with a virtual CD drive.

Copying Files with Invalid Characters from CD

2 Answers2