Mac <=> Windows filename transfer question.

[randomness]

I have a newly acquired external 300GB USB2/Firewire drive, formatted so that it will mount on both Macintosh and Windows computers. As a matter of fact, I've transferred files from both Windows and Macintosh machines onto the drive using both USB and Firewire. This works fine.

I also have a stack of CDs I burned on a Windows machine.

I'm sitting in front of a Mac OS 9 machine. Said machine truncates filenames longer than its 31 character limit.

I want to transfer files from the CDs to the drive without having their filenames truncated. I believe my options are to upgrade the machine to OS X, or to find another machine.

Am I mistaken?

Thanks in advance for answers.

Comments

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

When I multiply 27 by 6, I get 'way more than 13 bits. The other approach is to do
it out of band, so the OS isn't involved. This would entail writing a program that
directly read the Rock Ridge (or High Sierra, or whatever) file names from the
volume label on the CD, and handcrafted the filesystem entries on the hard drive.
While I am quite capable of writing such a monstrosity, I don't think it's a
reasonable solution. I have several machines that dual-boot MacOS 9 and X,
works pretty well.

[(Anonymous)]

When I multiply 27 by 6, I get 'way more than 13 bits.

Whoops! I meant to say 13-byte! Thirteen byte hash expanding to 26 bytes worth of printable hexadecimal.

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

Actually, all you need to do is make sure the Finder isn't involved— the rest of OS 9 (the HFS+ drivers, for instance) is reputedly entirely happy to take 255-byte filenames. Not that I ever bothered to check, when I had an OS 9-booting Mac around, but reasonably convincing people claim (see link above) to have written non-horrendous software for that OS that handles those files.

[dianec42.livejournal.com]

Ooo! So you could use MPW Shell or MacPerl or some such? Cool, I hadn't thought of that.

(Embarrassingly, I don't have a classic Mac around any more for experimentation. Not since the terrifying upgrades to the iBook...)