USB Flash Drive Format OK?

Most flash drives come formatted MSDOS - FAT16. That means you must use short filenames and no special characters. For example the '/' is a file path separator and cannot be used in a filename.

If you plan to use the device only on a Mac then format it Mac OS Extended. If you plan to use it on both a PC and a Mac, then you will need to rename Mac files for compatibility. There are utilities that will do that for you - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

The USB flash disk here and most other portable storage devices used between Windows and most any other platforms are very likely using the Microsoft FAT structures, and FAT uses short filenames of 8.3 characters -- eight character filename, and three character type -- and the more common visible filename is a long filename, and long filenames can be comprised of up to 255 characters.

In your case, / is not permitted in a FAT filename.

That's probably the trigger for the error here.

Try a different filename, and see if it copies out to the drive.

IIRC, \, *, /, :, >, <, and a few other characters are not permitted.

Kappy, FAT16 itself does provide and work with long filenames just fine. LFNs are overlaid using multiple directory entries and a particular combination of bits in the flags field bitmask. Whether a particular implementation of FAT16 (or FAT12 or FAT28, err, FAT32) deals with LFNs is another issue.

(I've written a FAT file system for another platform...)

Message was edited by: MrHoffman