Maximum filename length in NTFS Windows XP and Windows Vista

Question

I m designing a database table which will hold filenames of uploaded files  What is the maximum length of a filename in NTFS as used by Windows XP or Vista

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199 on Windows XP NTFS  I just checked   This is not theory but from just trying on my laptop  There may be mitigating effects  but it physically won t let me make it bigger   Is there some other setting limiting this  I wonder  Try it for yourself

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I cannot create a file with the name period extnesion in WS 2012 Explorer longer than 224 characters  Don t shoot the messenger   In the CMD of the same server I cannot create a longer than 235 character name      The system cannot find the path specified    The file with a 224 character name created in the Explorer cannot be opened in Notepad   - it just comes up with a new file instead

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The length in NTFS is 255  The NameLength field in the NTFS  Filename attribute is a byte with no offset  this yields a range of 0-255   The file name iself can be in different  namespaces   So far there are  POSIX  WIN32  DOS and  WIN32DOS - when a filename can be natively a DOS name    Since the string has a length  it could contain  0 but that would yield to problems and is not in the namespaces above    Thus the name of a file or directory can be up to 255 characters  When specifying the full path under Windows  you need to prefix the path with       or use     UNC server share for UNC paths  to mark this path as an extended-length one   32k characters   If your path is longer  you will have to set your working directory along the way  ugh - side effects due to the process-wide setting

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255 chars  though the complete path should not be longer than that as well  There is a nice table over at Wikipedia about this  http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

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According to MSDN  it s 260 characters  It includes   lt NUL gt   -the invisible terminating null character  so the actual length is 259    But read the article  it s a bit more complicated

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It s 257 characters  To be precise  NTFS itself does impose a maximum filename-length of several thousand characters  around 30 000 something   However  Windows imposes a 260 maximum length for the Path Filename  The drive folder takes up at least 3 characters  so you end up with 257

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This is what the  Unhandled exception  says on framework 4 5 when trying to save a file with a long filename      The specified path  file name  or both are too long  The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters  and the directory name must be less than 248 characters

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According to the new Windows SDK documentation  8 0  it seems that a new path limit is provided  There is a new set of path handling functions and an definition of PATHCCH MAX CCH like follows      max   of characters we support using the        syntax     0x7FFF   1 for NULL terminator   define PATHCCH MAX CCH             0x8000

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Individual components of a filename  i e  each subdirectory along the path  and the final filename  are limited to 255 characters  and the total path length is limited to approximately 32 000 characters   However  on Windows  you can t exceed MAX PATH value  259 characters for files  248 for folders    See http   msdn microsoft com en-us library aa365247 aspx for full details

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This part of the official documentation says clearly that it   s 255 Unicode characters for NTFS  exFAT and FAT32  and 127 Unicode or 254 ASCII characters for UDF   Apart from that  the maximum path name length is always 32 760 Unicode characters  with each path component no more than 255 characters

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255 characters   http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

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According to MSDN  it s 260 characters  It includes   lt NUL gt   -the invisible terminating null character  so the actual length is 259    But read the article  it s a bit more complicated

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I m adding this to the above approved answer   TO BE CLEAR  the reason people believe it to be 255-260 characters is because that is all that Windows Explorer supports  It will error out doing something like a file copy on filenames longer than that  However  a program can read and write much longer filenames  which is how you get to lengths that Explorer complains about in the first place   Microsoft s  recommended fix  in situations like this is to open the file in the original program that wrote it and rename it

User · Answer

This part of the official documentation says clearly that it   s 255 Unicode characters for NTFS  exFAT and FAT32  and 127 Unicode or 254 ASCII characters for UDF   Apart from that  the maximum path name length is always 32 760 Unicode characters  with each path component no more than 255 characters

User · Answer

According to MSDN  it s 260 characters  It includes   lt NUL gt   -the invisible terminating null character  so the actual length is 259    But read the article  it s a bit more complicated

User · Answer

255 characters   http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

User · Answer

I cannot create a file with the name period extnesion in WS 2012 Explorer longer than 224 characters  Don t shoot the messenger   In the CMD of the same server I cannot create a longer than 235 character name      The system cannot find the path specified    The file with a 224 character name created in the Explorer cannot be opened in Notepad   - it just comes up with a new file instead

User · Answer

Individual components of a filename  i e  each subdirectory along the path  and the final filename  are limited to 255 characters  and the total path length is limited to approximately 32 000 characters   However  on Windows  you can t exceed MAX PATH value  259 characters for files  248 for folders    See http   msdn microsoft com en-us library aa365247 aspx for full details

User · Answer

According to MSDN  it s 260 characters  It includes   lt NUL gt   -the invisible terminating null character  so the actual length is 259    But read the article  it s a bit more complicated

User · Answer

199 on Windows XP NTFS  I just checked   This is not theory but from just trying on my laptop  There may be mitigating effects  but it physically won t let me make it bigger   Is there some other setting limiting this  I wonder  Try it for yourself

User · Answer

199 on Windows XP NTFS  I just checked   This is not theory but from just trying on my laptop  There may be mitigating effects  but it physically won t let me make it bigger   Is there some other setting limiting this  I wonder  Try it for yourself

User · Answer

255 characters   http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

User · Answer

199 on Windows XP NTFS  I just checked   This is not theory but from just trying on my laptop  There may be mitigating effects  but it physically won t let me make it bigger   Is there some other setting limiting this  I wonder  Try it for yourself

User · Answer

238  I checked it under Win7 32 bit with the following bat script   set  fname   for  l   i in  1  1  27  do  call  setname  echo  fname  for  l   i in  1  1  100  do  call  check goto  EOF  setname set  fname  fname  123456789  goto  EOF  check set  fname  fname  0 -1    echo xx gt  fname  if not exist  fname  goto  eof dir  b pause goto  EOF

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Actually it is 256  see File System Functionality Comparison  Limits   To repeat a post on http   fixunix com microsoft-windows 30758-windows-xp-file-name-length-limit html      Assuming we re talking about NTFS and not FAT32  the  255 characters   for path file  is a limitation of Explorer  not the filesystem itself    NTFS supports paths up to 32 000 Unicode characters long  with each   component up to 255 characters       Explorer -and the Windows API- limits you to 260 characters for the   path  which include drive letter  colon  separating slashes and a   terminating null character  It s possible to read a longer path in   Windows if you start it with a       If you read the above posts you ll see there is a 5th thing you can be certain of  Finding at least one obstinate computer user

User · Answer

According to the new Windows SDK documentation  8 0  it seems that a new path limit is provided  There is a new set of path handling functions and an definition of PATHCCH MAX CCH like follows      max   of characters we support using the        syntax     0x7FFF   1 for NULL terminator   define PATHCCH MAX CCH             0x8000

User · Answer

The length in NTFS is 255  The NameLength field in the NTFS  Filename attribute is a byte with no offset  this yields a range of 0-255   The file name iself can be in different  namespaces   So far there are  POSIX  WIN32  DOS and  WIN32DOS - when a filename can be natively a DOS name    Since the string has a length  it could contain  0 but that would yield to problems and is not in the namespaces above    Thus the name of a file or directory can be up to 255 characters  When specifying the full path under Windows  you need to prefix the path with       or use     UNC server share for UNC paths  to mark this path as an extended-length one   32k characters   If your path is longer  you will have to set your working directory along the way  ugh - side effects due to the process-wide setting

User · Answer

255 characters   http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

User · Answer

Individual components of a filename  i e  each subdirectory along the path  and the final filename  are limited to 255 characters  and the total path length is limited to approximately 32 000 characters   However  on Windows  you can t exceed MAX PATH value  259 characters for files  248 for folders    See http   msdn microsoft com en-us library aa365247 aspx for full details

User · Answer

Individual components of a filename  i e  each subdirectory along the path  and the final filename  are limited to 255 characters  and the total path length is limited to approximately 32 000 characters   However  on Windows  you can t exceed MAX PATH value  259 characters for files  248 for folders    See http   msdn microsoft com en-us library aa365247 aspx for full details

User · Answer

It s 257 characters  To be precise  NTFS itself does impose a maximum filename-length of several thousand characters  around 30 000 something   However  Windows imposes a 260 maximum length for the Path Filename  The drive folder takes up at least 3 characters  so you end up with 257

User · Answer

This is what the  Unhandled exception  says on framework 4 5 when trying to save a file with a long filename      The specified path  file name  or both are too long  The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters  and the directory name must be less than 248 characters

User · Answer

It s 257 characters  To be precise  NTFS itself does impose a maximum filename-length of several thousand characters  around 30 000 something   However  Windows imposes a 260 maximum length for the Path Filename  The drive folder takes up at least 3 characters  so you end up with 257

User · Answer

238  I checked it under Win7 32 bit with the following bat script   set  fname   for  l   i in  1  1  27  do  call  setname  echo  fname  for  l   i in  1  1  100  do  call  check goto  EOF  setname set  fname  fname  123456789  goto  EOF  check set  fname  fname  0 -1    echo xx gt  fname  if not exist  fname  goto  eof dir  b pause goto  EOF

User · Answer

255 chars  though the complete path should not be longer than that as well  There is a nice table over at Wikipedia about this  http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

User · Answer

It s 257 characters  To be precise  NTFS itself does impose a maximum filename-length of several thousand characters  around 30 000 something   However  Windows imposes a 260 maximum length for the Path Filename  The drive folder takes up at least 3 characters  so you end up with 257

User · Answer

255 chars  though the complete path should not be longer than that as well  There is a nice table over at Wikipedia about this  http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

User · Answer

Actually it is 256  see File System Functionality Comparison  Limits   To repeat a post on http   fixunix com microsoft-windows 30758-windows-xp-file-name-length-limit html      Assuming we re talking about NTFS and not FAT32  the  255 characters   for path file  is a limitation of Explorer  not the filesystem itself    NTFS supports paths up to 32 000 Unicode characters long  with each   component up to 255 characters       Explorer -and the Windows API- limits you to 260 characters for the   path  which include drive letter  colon  separating slashes and a   terminating null character  It s possible to read a longer path in   Windows if you start it with a       If you read the above posts you ll see there is a 5th thing you can be certain of  Finding at least one obstinate computer user

User · Answer

255 chars  though the complete path should not be longer than that as well  There is a nice table over at Wikipedia about this  http   en wikipedia org wiki Filename

User · Answer

I m adding this to the above approved answer   TO BE CLEAR  the reason people believe it to be 255-260 characters is because that is all that Windows Explorer supports  It will error out doing something like a file copy on filenames longer than that  However  a program can read and write much longer filenames  which is how you get to lengths that Explorer complains about in the first place   Microsoft s  recommended fix  in situations like this is to open the file in the original program that wrote it and rename it

[windows-vista] Maximum filename length in NTFS (Windows XP and Windows Vista)?

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