about 8.3 filename

[bamsan]

When using ntfs, you can turn off 8.3 filename creation. My understanding
is, vista will stop generating 8.3 filenames as soon as you disable it in
the registry, but what happened to 8.3 names before the registry tweak? When
will they ever get removed? or they will just stay there and become eternal
garbage on my system?

If I -- for some reasons -- decide to re-enable the 8.3 names, will vista
automatically re-generate the names? or there is extra steps to force vista
to do so?

Thanks for help

 

[Andrew McLaren]

When using ntfs, you can turn off 8.3 filename creation. My understanding
is, vista will stop generating 8.3 filenames as soon as you disable it in
the registry, but what happened to 8.3 names before the registry tweak?
When will they ever get removed? or they will just stay there and become
eternal

No, the existing 8.3 names will exist forever. If you really want to get rid
of them, you would need to reformat the disk.

However, the 8.3 names occupy very little space. This optimisation tweak is
often promoted by people looking for optimisation tweaks; rather than the
result of any performance tuning per se. On current systems, given
contemporary hard disk and CPU performance, the overhead is neglegibile.
And, turning this off will create problems for any 16-bit apps you run.

Anecdotal evidence is - well, anecdotal! - but, for what it's worth: I tried
this a few times, but then gave up. It didn't improve performance to any
significant degree; but it did bite me in the arse, when I least expected
it.

If I -- for some reasons -- decide to re-enable the 8.3 names, will vista
automatically re-generate the names? or there is extra steps to force
vista

The 8.3 names are not automatically created. To create 8.3 names you need to
force the files to be recreated, for example by a backup and restore.

Hope it helps,

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <u#[email protected]> "Andrew McLaren"

However, the 8.3 names occupy very little space. This optimisation tweak is
often promoted by people looking for optimisation tweaks; rather than the
result of any performance tuning per se. On current systems, given
contemporary hard disk and CPU performance, the overhead is neglegibile.

There is one other consideration, the short filenames sometimes create
unexpected results when dealing with wildcards.

For example, open a command prompt and type "dir c:\*~*" and you'll
typically see "Program Files" listed (and possibly others)

In some cases the short file names can actually create filenames that
cause unexpected wildcard hits. For this reason I've kept SFN
generation off on most of my servers (Except user-facing file servers)
for some time, without any ill effects.

And, turning this off will create problems for any 16-bit apps you run.

Worse, there is still the odd 32-bit app that relies on short file names


Luckily, only one of my server apps has this particular issue, and as a
result I keep it in a SFN-accessible path structure (In other words,
rather then generating SFNs system wide, I simply only use SFNs in this
app)

 

[bamsan]

Are there some way to completely remove 8.3 filenames? Especially the
leftovers before you turn it off from the registry. 3rd party utility maybe?