#LONG PATH TOOL OPEN SOURCE ARCHIVE#
#LONG PATH TOOL OPEN SOURCE WINDOWS#

The second conversation involved fixing a 2003 server. In one, someone was describing the best way to cook spaghetti by pouring the noodles into the sauce rather than the other way around. In our office the other day, we had 2 very different conversations going on within hearing distance of each other. That’s a pretty easy fix for a frustrating issue. The other switches that I have documented are optional, or you may have a favorite of your own you like to use. Then, use it carefully to avoid unexpected results, which can end up getting pretty scary! You’ll swear Sam Wheat has taken possession of your computer (remember Sam and Carl in the office scene in Ghost?). MIR is the switch that does the trick, and as a word of caution, personally, I would not use this switch for file transfers or backups, only for desired deletes.

#LONG PATH TOOL OPEN SOURCE WINDOWS#

You can’t perform the copy, move, or delete function on the files, but the ghost can! A prerequisite is to make sure you have at least the Windows 7/2008 R2 version of Robocopy then proceed to follow the steps listed below. The idea is to create an empty folder as your source, then mirror it to the target destination folder. That’s when Robocopy with the MIR option became really useful.

#LONG PATH TOOL OPEN SOURCE ARCHIVE#

One is that you can drill down into the folder or folders with the problem files, share the folder, map a network drive to the shared folder, open the mapped drive and delete the file or files, disconnect the mapped drive, and finally, delete the share. This method works well for copying or moving files. However, if you are trying to delete files, I prefer the second method, which I recently used when I was presented with the long filename error while trying to archive a huge user folder for one of our clients after the user had passed away. So, if you’ve ever tried to move or remove files or folders and been presented with the ‘Destination Path Too Long’ error, there are a couple of built-in options. It works more times than not, doesn’t it?Įveryone knows gremlins can’t survive across the discontinuation of the power source, right? Wink! Wink! Might as well incorporate Sci-Fi in this discussion as we system admins are already accused of speaking Klingon! After all, many users already describe a computer with strange issues as having gremlins, why not capitalize on that train of thought, eh? That’s why we in the tech industry always have users reboot as the first course of action.

The technology world did not exist in 1949 as we know it today, so the term makes much more sense in our world in my opinion than it does psychology. It has also been used by programmers to explain when a program runs contrary to their expectations. It has evolved to also describe the supposed consciousness in a device that behaves as if it has a will that is independent of what the human operator wants the device to do. The Ghost in the Machine term was originally coined by Gilbert Ryle in 1949 to describe the human mind as existing independently of the human brain. That’s right, blame it on the ghost in the machine if you think you can get away with that. You’ll be ready to organize a posse to track down the specter that made off with your data. If that is not your intention, make sure the option is not in your command path.

The MIR option will delete anything in the destination that does not exist in the source.

If you are trying to copy some additional files or perform a backup to add new data to your existing backup, you could be in for a nasty surprise. For instance, the MIR option will create a mirror of your source in your destination. Not quite Twilight Zone material, but do you want to see something really scary? While Robocopy is a valuable tool for us system admins for copying or transferring files and performing backups, we have to be careful about how we use the options.

Long path tool open source