Problem with MacBook & Windows File System Incompatibilities

[MikeA01730]

Hi,

I have a Jungle Disk cloud backup of a MacBook containing around 4,500 files (6.5 GB) in a typical folder structure, but no access to the MacBook itself. I'm a Windows user and would like to store and use these files on my Windows machine. I'd also like my current PC backups to automatically backup these files.

The obvious thing (to me) to do is to restore from the JD cloud backup to my PC, but when I do lots of the files (around 1,500) don't restore. The problem is with file paths that are invalid on Windows, e.g. folder names that start or end with a blank, or names that contain disallowed characters or character combinations (e.g. ", ?, .., :, |). It appears that when JD restores an Apple path on a PC it converts "/" characters to "\" but does nothing else.

I'm not sure the best way to deal with this. Part of the problem is that I'm not really sure where these restrictions come from. Is it the file system, Windows, or a combination?

Would exFAT help? I.e. could I restore the backup to a friend's MacBook, copy the restored files to a USB thumb drive or USB HD formatted in exFAT, move the drive to the PC, rename the files and folders in place on the exFAT volume to make them legal from the PC, and finally could just copy them all to a PC drive? The question is can I do the renames on the exFAT volume from Windows.

Another approach is to restore the backup to a friend's MacBook, copy the files to a USB HD formatted for HFS, move the drive to the PC, and then access the files on the PC using something like Paragon HFS+ for Windows. My hope would be that HFS+ would do something automatically to make these files accessible from the Windows PC. If not then maybe I could rename the files and folders using HFS+ to fix the problems, and them copy them to the Windows PC. Again the question is can I do the renames.

I'm new to file system compatibility issues and am reading what I can to figure this out, but I don't know if I'm missing something important or misunderstanding what I'm reading. Any ideas on the best way to solve this problem?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[dwig]

Hi,
...
Another approach is to restore the backup to a friend's MacBook, copy the files to a USB HD formatted for HFS, move the drive to the PC, and then access the files on the PC using something like Paragon HFS+ for Windows. My hope would be that HFS+ would do something automatically to make these files accessible from the Windows PC. If not then maybe I could rename the files and folders using HFS+ to fix the problems, and them copy them to the Windows PC. Again the question is can I do the renames.
...

There's no value is using HFS+ as it won't auto-magically massage the filenames for you.

There are a number of file/path naming differences between macOS and Windows (and Unix/Linux for that matter) that can cause issues. Each OS reserves some characters for special purposes, prohibiting them in path and file names, but the reserved list differs between OSs. I've encountered various issues not only with the OSs themselves but also with applications. I use a file copying & backup utility on macOS that fails to match files containing trailing spaces. I've also had issues with Adobe Lightroom with library exports on Mac that contain folder names with leading spaces failing to import into Lr on Windows even when the actual library files do copy fine onto an NTFS formatted drive.

My suggestion:
1. download using a borrowed Mac and save to an exFAT formatted drive.
2. Use the Mac to massage the file and folder names to be Windows compliant.
3. copy the files from the exFAT formatted drive to you Windows machine. You can omit copying any and all files that start with a period. These are hidden on macOS but visible on Windows. They are macOS specific files containing "stuff & nonsense" only used by macOS's Finder and a few macOS services.

FreeFileSync is an app that can do the copying for you while filtering out files with certain naming patterns. It's available for both macOS and Windows.

 

[KPOM]

Hi,

I have a Jungle Disk cloud backup of a MacBook containing around 4,500 files (6.5 GB) in a typical folder structure, but no access to the MacBook itself. I'm a Windows user and would like to store and use these files on my Windows machine. I'd also like my current PC backups to automatically backup these files.

The obvious thing (to me) to do is to restore from the JD cloud backup to my PC, but when I do lots of the files (around 1,500) don't restore. The problem is with file paths that are invalid on Windows, e.g. folder names that start or end with a blank, or names that contain disallowed characters or character combinations (e.g. ", ?, .., :, |). It appears that when JD restores an Apple path on a PC it converts "/" characters to "\" but does nothing else.

I'm not sure the best way to deal with this. Part of the problem is that I'm not really sure where these restrictions come from. Is it the file system, Windows, or a combination?

Would exFAT help? I.e. could I restore the backup to a friend's MacBook, copy the restored files to a USB thumb drive or USB HD formatted in exFAT, move the drive to the PC, rename the files and folders in place on the exFAT volume to make them legal from the PC, and finally could just copy them all to a PC drive? The question is can I do the renames on the exFAT volume from Windows.

Another approach is to restore the backup to a friend's MacBook, copy the files to a USB HD formatted for HFS, move the drive to the PC, and then access the files on the PC using something like Paragon HFS+ for Windows. My hope would be that HFS+ would do something automatically to make these files accessible from the Windows PC. If not then maybe I could rename the files and folders using HFS+ to fix the problems, and them copy them to the Windows PC. Again the question is can I do the renames.

I'm new to file system compatibility issues and am reading what I can to figure this out, but I don't know if I'm missing something important or misunderstanding what I'm reading. Any ideas on the best way to solve this problem?

Thanks,
Mike

Try MacDrive.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-ways-read-mac-formatted-drive-windows/

 

[MikeA01730]

dwig & KPOM,

Thanks for the help.

Mike