How to delete a folder with a long path. If a file with a long name is not deleted and an error appears that the file system does not support such long names

Jan 28 2017

Even for those who are not involved in photography, image editing, creating videos and slide shows, creating viral postcards, animation, etc., they often find the same images on their computer, placed in different folders.

Of course, for those who are engaged in creative activities on the computer, the habit of storing images in separate thematic folders is very helpful.

And also, the habit of deleting media material that has become unnecessary after completing work on a project.

And yet, no matter how hard you try, similar images(duplicates) still appear periodically on the computer.

When selecting pictures for a group on social networks or a blog, editing and optimizing them, it is not always possible to remove the original pictures that have become unnecessary.

In a previous article I describe in detail

In order not to get confused - the same pictures with different extensions or size given different names, placed in different folders, etc.

But the images in the pictures remain the same and wanting to delete unnecessary copies you are faced with the need to spend time on this.

More accumulation identical images on the computer is due to the fact that we upload photographs from the camera (phone, camera) to the computer entirely (as a whole) into one folder. At the same time, without deleting the photos from the media.

After taking a few more pictures, we again upload all the photos from the camera as a whole to another folder.

So infinite number once.

When looking at photos, sometimes you really want to put things in order - to delete similar and unnecessary ones.

But this takes time! Time and patience!

Because it’s difficult to remember “have I already seen this photo or not?”, “did I delete it (the same one) or not?”, “and where did I put it?”, “what if this one is not already in other folders?”

In general, it is troublesome to delete duplicate pictures and photos from your computer.

And sometimes you don’t want to leave everything “as is,” because confusion arises, takes up time and spoils the mood.

To help us, there are several programs that can quickly view, compare images and remove duplicates.

Oh, if only they could create slideshows and collages themselves...

These are the programs:

AntiDupl.NET
DuplicateFinder
DuplicateFileDetector
DuplicateCleaner
ImageDupeless
ImageComparer
Duplicate File Remover

In this article I will talk about the AntiDupl.NET program

Firstly, because I use it myself. It is installed on my computer.

Secondly, because this program is free and recognizes images in JPEG formats, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG and others.

I would like to note that the program scans and analyzes the content itself graphic files.

And therefore it finds not only completely identical files, but also similar ones.

Pictures become similar after editing - cropping, writing, or rotating the corner of the image. The blogger performs all these manipulations with images to create unique picture for the site.

Sometimes pictures already posted on a blog need to be left for further creation of a banner, for example, or posting an announcement of an article on social networking pages.

The program's ability to find similar pictures(modified) helps a lot to quickly find and remove those that are really unnecessary.

The program supports the Russian interface and it is possible flexible management search parameters.

Download the program

On the program download page, select the most top line- since it contains latest version programs.

When downloading a program, immediately determine the folder and location on the computer where it will be stored permanently. Because there is no need to install the program. After unpacking the archive into the same folder, you will find a file with the extension exe.

Launch the program double click left mouse button on this file.

Now let's set the program language.

Next, “Specify path” (yellow folder) and in the window click “Add directory”.

After this, a small window will open where you can select the folder in which you want to check the images

To analyze and search for duplicates, you can add more than one folder.

And even folders containing folders inside them.

And even just specify the entire C drive, for example. Or a “flash drive”, which at this moment will be connected to the computer.

After the directories have been added, click on “OK” and then on the gear icon - that is, we proceed to selecting settings options.

Now let’s take our time and thoughtfully tick or not tick required settings search.

The Options window has several tabs.

The meaning of the settings and their description are very clear, so I won’t dwell on them.

Go through all the tabs before clicking OK

And now one more step - click on the green triangle “Start Search” icon. After this, the program will very quickly give you the result

The program will give you the result of the check in the next window, where at first glance nothing will be clear.

It's actually simple. There are 2 pictures displayed on the left side. And under each of its data - weight, size, name, etc.

You can manually remove the top or bottom. Or give the program a command to do it for you.

Pay attention to the top command line And vertical line with similar icons.

Move the cursor to a button and a tooltip will appear with the meaning of these buttons.

If you want to quickly delete, for example, all the first pictures, press the key combination Ctrl+A on your keyboard and then the button in top panel"Delete all first" programs.

To leave pictures edited and prepared for further publication or creating a slide show, look at the parameters you need - weight, size, extension. All this data appears in the data of each copy.

Deleted pictures will go to the trash. All that remains is to empty the basket itself.

When I first cleaned my computer of duplicate images using this program, my computer freed up...more than 9 GB!

I was impressed myself :)

I think that it will take you much more time to study and master this program for the first time than to remove duplicate images on your computer using the AntiDupl.NET program

Over the years, it is collected on computers large number photographs. Among which there are often copies of the same image. As a result, photos can take up a significant portion of your PC's memory. Finding and deleting identical photos will help save computer resources. Luckily for this there is special programs and you don't have to search for identical photos manually.

In this article I will introduce you to the best free programs to search for identical photos on a computer with operating system Windows 10/8/7. The programs listed in the article will help you find the same images and even a slightly modified version of them.

Programs for finding identical photos

Before you start using these tools, be sure to make a copy of all your images.

Find.Same.Images.OK

Find.Same.Images.OK finds identical images by comparing them at the pixel level. This way, even if the images are edited, that is, rotated, mirrored, or even resized, the program will be able to find them.

You can download the Find.Same.Images.OK program from the official website.

Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder

This utility does a search and can find exact copies of images, and also shows the percentage of their similarity. I tested the program on one of my folders, which had different variations of the same photo in terms of colors, sizes, and even images with similar faces. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder was able to find everything.

Using the settings, you can adjust the search for similar images from exact copies to similar pictures. The program is also available in a portable (version that does not require installation on a computer) version.

You can download the Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder utility from the official website.

CCleaner

Multifunctional CCleaner utility comes with built-in module search for identical files Duplicate Finder, which you can use to search identical pictures. But search capabilities with using CCleaner very limited, because it can only find images with same size, name andmodified date and file contents, but not
can determine whichexactlyfiles can be safely deleted.

That's whyI I recommend checking the file path and the file itself to make sure that it is in fact a duplicate. You can choose the folders to search for identical photos yourself in the search settings.

Download CCleaner program you can from the official website.

Glary Duplicate Finder

Using Glary Duplicate File Finder, you can completely browse through all the images on your computer to find duplicate images. The result is divided into two parts: files and duplicate files. You can specify what you want to keep and delete everything else. To find a duplicate, the utility matches files by type, content, size and creation date.

You can also click the "Check Intelligent" button and it will only select those duplicate files that can be removed with one click without a second thought.

You can download the Glary Duplicate Finder program for searching identical images from the official website.

VisiPics

It's old software, but it works quite well. You may not like its interface, but its ability to find images will certainly impress you. You can find duplicate images using three different filters: strict, simple and loose. It also finds small and uncompressed low resolution images as duplicates, giving you the option to select and save best copy. VisiPics supports JPEG images, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, TIFF, TGA and RAW. Results are displayed in real time. So you don't have to wait for the scan to complete. You can continue to remove images as they appear as a result.

You can download the VisiPics program from the official website.

Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder

This image search engine searches for similar images based on image formats, different bit depths, and image sizes. The program allows you to select the percentage of similarity when performing image searches. Like VisiPics, Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder can also find smaller, lower resolution images as duplicates.

The application allows you to create rules, select post-processing actions, and so on. The software also maintains a cache of previous results for faster results. But the free version has one drawback - the results are limited to 10.

You can download the Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder utility from the official website.

AntiTwin

This small tool can compare not only the size and date of a file, but also its contents. It can find similar images, documents and music files on your PC. The most big advantage The benefits of this software are that it is completely free and there is no adware at all. To get accurate results when comparing images, you can perform a byte comparison or a pixel comparison.

The results clearly show duplicate images, but you can also preview each file to avoid deleting information that is important to you.

There is probably not a person today who does not actively use a computer or other portable devices. As a rule, over time, the PC accumulates huge amount absolutely identical files. Search and delete them in manual mode quite tedious and time-consuming. Fortunately, today you don’t have to rack your brains about how to perform these manipulations. Developers modern applications Programs for finding duplicate photos on a computer have long been invented. Let's look at the best of them, as well as types of graphic files that often have to be deleted.

What are the same photographs?

As a rule, on laptop computers several categories:

• Identical files. And in this case we're talking about about those situations where users simply copy the same files and paste them into other folders on the computer.
• Images with the same names. This often happens when using cameras in different brands. As a rule, they assign the same file names.
• Bad shots. Today professional photographers very often use continuous shooting one or another object. As a result, a simply fantastic number of the same photographs appear, differing only in some scanty nuances.
• Modified images. In this case, we are talking about those photographs that have been reduced, enlarged, mirrored or modified

It’s easy to find a program for finding duplicate photos on the Internet. The main thing is to install them correctly.

How to download

It is best to look for programs to find and remove duplicate photos on the official websites of the developers. As a rule, software creators provide users with the opportunity to use truncated versions of utilities.

Downloading applications from unofficial sources is fraught with consequences. Very often in the folder with boot files turn out to be viruses.

Duplicate Cleaner

This tool does a great job of finding and removing duplicate photos on laptop computers. To get rid of junk files, which only slow down work hard disk and take up a bunch free space, just use Duplicate Cleaner, which cleans network and local disks. In addition to this, the application also finds same audio, video files and text documents.

If we talk about the main features of this utility, then it is worth paying attention to the fact that the search is carried out not only by name, but also by the contents of files. In this case, you can set custom settings. Scans sound files produced in all known and currently valid formats.

While running the program to find duplicate photos, you can export and import search results in CSV format. The user can also track and view the size, creation date and other data about the files. This helps you decide which documents are best to delete.

AntiDupl

This program for finding identical photos allows you to quickly recognize all duplicate documents on your computer’s hard drive. This tool is absolutely free, in addition, it supports an interface in several languages, including Russian.

The utility works very quickly and is different minimum requirements To system resources. Moreover, you don’t even have to install the program; you just need to copy it to a flash drive and use it in any directory.

The application perfectly processes a large amount of information and allows you to quickly detect entire lists of identical files. The main window of the program contains basic controls, the meaning of which becomes clear on an intuitive level, so even an inexperienced person can use the utility.

Among the most interesting options is the ability to search for defective files. You can also select the type of documents that may be lost during the search process. In addition, the program for finding duplicate photos in Russian allows you to search for files even in subdirectories and hidden folders.

In the settings, the user can specify whether he wants to delete mirrored images or those files in which the image sizes have been changed. Thanks to such flexible parameters, all duplicates are removed very quickly and efficiently. At the end of the application, a detailed report is issued.

CloneSpy

This very small utility will allow you to quickly clean up your computer. necessary files. Immediately after installation and the first launch of the program, automatic search and control fixation of all files that are in the system. In this case, the application completely ignores the creation date, size and other indicators of documents.

However, in the menu of this program there is no option to disable the display of files with same names. However, if you consider that this free product, then you can come to terms with some nuances.

Image Comparator

This program for finding duplicate photos is very popular among users. By by and large it can be considered the most productive and functional.

Available both paid and free version this application. If we talk about the advantages of the program, then you should pay attention to fast speed search and display duplicates. This is the optimal solution for those who store terabytes of information on their computer for a huge amount of time.

However, there are some downsides that many users have noticed. The most important drawback is visible after installing the application. The program interface is very inconvenient. The same goes for file processing.

In order to view the desired file, you will have to select it and click the arrow. Only after this can the document thumbnail be displayed in the main window. What about those who have more than 200 photos that they want to delete or process? In this case, manipulations will have to be performed 400 or more times. At the same time, the user also needs to remember the names of the files that they need.

Also, many noted the not very convenient method of searching for duplicates by the number of similar pixels. Because, on the one hand, to say that this best program It is very difficult to find duplicate photos, but on the other hand, the utility has a lot of flexible settings.

VisiPics

This application breaks all records for the number of downloads abroad. On the one hand, this is explained by the fact that this is a free version and perhaps there is big problems with access to such applications. But, according to reviews, it really has a lot of positive qualities. Among them, it is worth noting excellent functionality. The settings are very sensitive, thanks to which the user can independently adjust the mechanism for searching for similar source images.

Displaying identical files really happens very quickly and efficiently. However, many have noticed that this program to find duplicate photos is a little more tied to the light of the photo, which can lead to confusion in some situations.

If we talk about the shortcomings, then, according to user reviews, they also drew attention to the inconvenience of the interface. You can view photographs enlarged only after holding the cursor on the image for a very long time. At the same time, a miniature is displayed with a resolution of only 48 pixels, and it is very difficult to see anything on it. Therefore, it is inconvenient for an experienced photographer to use the program.

It is also worth considering that the utility interface is not translated into Russian, so those who do not speak English will find it quite difficult at first.

Photo Database 4.5

This program for finding duplicate photos is very often used by specialists when working with photographs, not only to search for identical files, but also for many other functions.

Starting from version 4.5, the utility added new folder under the title "Collection", where you can find the "Duplicates" category. She is responsible for finding the necessary files. When you open this directory, the program automatically searches for duplicate photos.

The utility also offers quick navigation, which is responsible for navigating to folders with selected images. Removal is done in a very convenient way. To do this, just select all unnecessary files in the conductor, using shortcut keys. After that, you just need to press 1 “Delete” button. All selected photos are moved to the trash can and removed from the collection.

Also available automatic removal files. To do this, just click the corresponding button, which is located on the lower taskbar. You can also select several images and get rid of only them.

In conclusion

This article discussed free utilities, which can be easily found in open access or download via torrents. They are more suitable for home private use. Of course, there are also commercial versions of almost all programs. However, such great functionality is not always needed by a person who just wants to quickly delete identical files. As a rule, they are used only by experienced photographers who constantly work with a huge number of images.

The title turned out to be long, but it indicates the essence of the problem that will be described here. Recently I encountered a not very good situation. While sorting the hard drive and clearing it of unnecessary things, I discovered that one of the files was not deleted, but an error appeared with the following content: “The file system does not support such long names source files. Try moving the file to a folder with a shorter path length or specify a shorter file name and try again."

In fact, the problem can be solved very simply and quickly, and now I will describe two methods for solving it, and it’s up to you to decide which one to use.

What to do if the path to the source is too long, how to delete such a file?

If you have a file that is not deleted due to a long name, there are several options to solve the problem. For example, a file is nested in several directories, say five or even ten folders that have names of 10-20 characters, then this may be the reason for not deleting the file. The fact is that Windows does not support any files whose names exceed 260 characters. If this limit is exceeded, the error that I showed above will appear. The number of folders with their own names and the file name itself should total less than 260 characters. The system also has one feature - if this limit is exceeded, we can still rename folders. This means that you need to rename all folders to a short name, for example, a letter or number.

This problem may arise not only because you gave such a long name. This happened to me when I decided to download website files from the server and do something. Since the files were no longer needed, I deleted the entire directory with the site files, but as it turned out, it contained a file with a very long name, plus folder names, and this did not allow me to delete it all.

Method two will help if the first one failed. The fact is that not all folders leading to a file with a long name can be renamed and the same file system error will occur. Then you can create virtual disk, using any of the subfolders leading to the non-deletable file. Now I'll show you how to do this.

Open the command line. To do this, press the Win+R combination and enter the command cmd. You can click right click mouse on the Start menu (or the Win+X key combination) and select the command line there.

Now you write a command that will create a virtual disk for us:

You need to select a drive letter that is not occupied by others. System partition Usually the letters C are indicated, and the second section is indicated as D or E, then choose any other.

The path to the folder must be specified from the disk. If this is difficult for you, then open the folder that will act as a virtual disk and copy the path to it in Explorer at the top.

My command looks like this:

When we go to My Computer, you should see a drive there with the letter that we assigned to it from the command line. Thus, the path to the file will be reduced by almost half, which means that the total length of characters can be less than 260 characters. Now you can try to get rid of the undeletable.

In order to delete a virtual disk you need to enter the command:

Using Total Commander

On the Internet I discovered a method that allows you to delete files that cannot be deleted using . Of course, the downside here is that you have to install additional software on a computer, and not everyone will want to do this. In any case, I’ll leave this method here in case anyone wants to use it.

Download and install the program. Let's go to the tab "File" click on the section "Change attributes". A window appears where we remove the checkmarks from all attributes. If there is no checkmark next to the item at the top "Process directory contents"- choose. Now from the same program we try to delete a file with a long name.

We use the 7-Zip archiver

For this task we will need a 7-Zip archiver. Right-click on the starting directory and point the mouse at the partition "7-Zip" and select the item "Add to archive".

A window appears in which you only need to check one box. "Delete files after compression". Then click OK.

An archive of all this stuff is created on the desktop, and folders with long file they are simply deleted. You can delete the archive itself without any problems.

These are the ways we have looked at to fix the file not being deleted error. Maybe you have other options on how to do this?

Here is an example of a folder structure that I called the “big doll”:

As you can see, on disk “D” (Data) there is source folder video, in it there is a folder “Movies”, in it “Everything you need to watch movies” and then in the same way a folder within a folder. At the same time, many folders have long names and names - more than 10-15 characters, which in total will give the volume of characters in all names more than 260. And if at the end of such a “matryoshka” there is a file, then it may turn out that you cannot work with it you can... Sometimes the system itself does not allow you to ultimately create a folder or file that exceeds the allowed number of characters, but sometimes for some reason this happens.

At the beginning, for beginners, I will explain what a path to a file and folder is. Path is the so-called address on the computer where the file or folder is located. For example, a file called “My file.txt” is located on the local drive D: in the “Documents” folder. Then the path to this file will look like this:

D:\Documents\My file.txt

Or, for example, this is what the path from the example above will look like, where I showed complex structure folders.

As you can see, the number of characters in the path above is large and it is possible that at the end there will be a file or folder with a long name that you cannot delete.

When you try to delete a file with a long path name, you will receive a window with an error like this:

I tried to artificially recreate the problem and this is what I got.

On drive “D” I created a folder short name“1” and placed a file with a very long name in it. Here's an example:

Now I also rename that folder “1” to some very long name, for example:

Interestingly, Windows freely allows you to rename a folder to such a long name, despite the fact that the number of characters in the name of this folder + file name already exceeds 260! Well, after renaming the folder to a long name, I can no longer delete the file located in it and get the error shown.

Or here’s another example... I maintain the website of the Moscow Instrument-Making College, where I previously worked full-time, and sometimes I use a copy of the site on my computer to test some new “goodies” for the site. What if I install something bad and the website on the hosting dies? :) And so I check it on my computer and if everything is in order, then I set it up on a real website located on the hosting. So, one time I transferred the entire site from hosting to test one thing, and after I finished working, I decided to delete the folder with the site from my computer. After all, it weighs about 6 GB. The entire site was deleted, except for a number of folders. I started looking and saw that those folders that contained a file with a long name in the form of hieroglyphs were not deleted:

I tried to delete this file with a long name again and saw the same error that I mentioned above. I tried to rename it, but it doesn't work either. Well, I had to think about how to solve the problem.

How to solve the problem of deleting a folder/file with a long path name!

I tried 2 ways to delete a folder/file with a long name in the path to it. Both of them are not technically difficult (especially the 1st), so I think a beginner can handle it if he does everything exactly as I show:

Rename multiple folders in a file path to more short name. This is the simplest solution that should already help many! Suppose you have a file in a folder with a very long name that you cannot delete, open, copy, and generally cannot work with.

Then try simply renaming the folder in which the file with a long name is located, for example, to “1”. Let me return to one of the examples above. Here is a folder with a long name:

I rename via standard conductor Windows title that folder in “1” and this is what the file path now looks like:

Now you can safely work with the file; the system will allow you to open, rename and delete it.

If you have a long folder tree, i.e. like a nesting doll, in one folder there is another, in it there is another, then another, then start renaming from the very first folder from this nesting doll. Not with the last one on the list, but with the first one!

It may be that there are a huge number of folders and you won’t be able to rename some of them due to the same error or it will take you a lot of time. In this case, I suggest the second method.

The method is that you can take some folder, for example, in the middle of a common tree and connect it as a virtual disk. A virtual disk is something that reminds us of a regular one. local disk, but which simply binds to specific folder, for example, to quickly interact with it.

Let's say you have a long path like this:

D:\Video\My Movies\Everything you need to watch movies\Programs for watching movies\How to open MP4 movies\List of MP4 example movies\List of programs for opening MP4\What not to do when opening MP4 files

Let's assume that in the very last folder we have some problematic file, which we cannot work with, since the path to it, as we see, is quite long :)

We can take and connect one of the folders with a long name in the middle of the path as a virtual disk. Let this be the “Programs for watching movies” folder.

To connect a virtual disk, we need the so-called Windows command line, i.e. console.

You can open it via Windows search. In the search, type “Command line”:

In the command line window we need to type the command:

subst virtual_disk_letter "path_to_folder"

You can set any drive letter, as long as it is not already occupied by one of the local drives. For example, you have a local drive C and D, which means you can no longer call the virtual drive with the same letter. You can call it, for example, the letter “X”, because it is rarely used in Windows.

For the folder path, you insert the path to the folder that you want to connect as a virtual one. As I already said, in my example virtual folder Let’s make “Programs for watching movies”, which means the path needs to be specified like this:

D:\Video\My Movies\Everything you need to watch movies\Programs for watching movies\

So, the final command in my case will look like this:

subst X: “D:\Video\My Movies\Everything you need to watch movies\Programs for watching movies\”

To execute the entered command, press the “Enter” key on the keyboard. The virtual disk will be created.

Now let's move on to Windows Explorer, go to the “This computer” (or “Computer”) section and see the virtual disk created there:

You can distinguish it by its letter. I assigned the letter "X" to the virtual disk. Now if we open this virtual disk, we will immediately find ourselves in the “Programs for watching movies” folder. Those. we took and cut off half the path to the final folder.

For comparison...

Previously, the path to the final folder looked like this:

D:\Video\My Movies\Everything you need to watch movies\Programs for watching movies\How to open MP4 movies\List of MP4 example movies\List of programs for opening MP4\What not to do when opening MP4 files

After connecting the virtual disk to the “Programs for watching movies” folder, the path to the final folder looks like this:

X:\How to open MP4 movies\List of MP4 example films\List of programs for opening MP4\What not to do when opening MP4 files

Do you feel the difference? The path is shortened by half, since the drive letter immediately directs us to the folder in the middle of the path :) And since the path is greatly shortened, you probably now have removed the character limit in the names of files and folders and will be able to delete a file or folder with a long name!

After you solve the problem with the file, the virtual disk can be deleted again so that it does not become an eyesore in Explorer.

To do this, open the command prompt again Windows string and enter the command:

Subst virtual_disk_letter /d

In my case the drive letter is “X”, so the command would look like this:

When I was thinking about options for solving the problem, how to delete a folder or file with a long name, I found another option on the Internet: delete the problematic file through the program “ Total Commander" I tried it, it didn’t work out, that’s why I didn’t recommend this method :)) And the method, even if it would work for someone, is honestly not fun, because you have to install additional program to your computer for the sake of deleting just one file or folder with a long name...

I think when it occurs similar problem problem, which I have encountered more than once, one of the methods described above will definitely help you.

That's all! See you soon in the next articles;)