Zip file too large

[Guest]

I did a clean install of Windows a week ago to get rid of certain unwanted
programs and before that I did a backup of my photos. It's easy in XP so I
just used the built-in zip-tool and zipped them up and moved them to another
harddrive before formatting and re-installing.

When I later tried to unzip the file I ran into trouble. It was corrupt or
something. After a lot of searching and trying and thinking I think I know
where the problem is. The file is too large. Apparently the zip-format is can
only work with files up to 4Gig and I think my photos were somewhat over that
limit.

Why am I allowed to create a zip-file that is too large? And more
importantly, how do I get my pictures back?

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

Use this program.. http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm ..
it is called PC Inspector and it is freeware..

 

[Dennis Marks]

Try a stand alone zip program.

--
Dennis

Disclaimer: The above is my opinion. I do not guarantee it. Be sure to back
up any files involved and use at your own risk. Batteries not included. Not
for internal use. Don't run with knives.

 

[Guest]

Thank You for your quick response.

I've downloaded and installed the program, but it freezes almost instantly
when it starts scanning my hard drive. Or is it just a painfully slow process?

Btw, I'm not looking for the old deleted photos, because I formatted that
drive the hard way. I'm looking for something to make me able to see into the
too-large-zip-file and extract my pictures from there. Is that was this
application can do?

"Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User" skrev:

 

[Guest]

I have tried quite a few and they just say

Cannot open file: it does not appear to be a valid archive.


I'm not sure that I ever will be able to extract my pictures. And there's no
use trying to repair the file, right? Cause even if I repair it, it will
again be too large for the zip-format to be able to handle it.

I'm not 100% certain that this is the problem, but I'm as sure as you can
get. If you know what I mean.



"Dennis Marks" skrev:

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

It takes a while to scan the drive for lost/deleted files.. how bad do you
want them back?..

 

[Guest]

I have used the below File Splitter for files over 4Gb and it works great,
but I have not tried it on a ZIP file. You could take a test run on a copy
of the ZIP file, not the original. Take a look.
The File Splitter - Download
http://www.dekabyte.com/filesplitter/download.html

 

[Guest]

Really bad... I'm running some sort of "fix corrupt zip-files by extracting
the data from them"-program right now, but if that doesn't work I'll have to
try the PC Inspector thing again.

I cannot figure out why Windows didn't tell me to stop zipping the files
when the resulting zip-file was too large for the format to handle.

"Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User" skrev:

 

[Guest]

It didn't do it. This app just splits the file in smaller files with a .exe
to build it back up again. It doesn't care whether it's a .zip-file,
..dat-file or whatever. So the problem will remain even though the file is
split in four parts.

Thanks anyway.

"Byte" skrev:

 

[LVTravel]

When you reinstalled XP did you by chance format your hard drive as FAT 32
instead of NTFS? If so, there is a 4 GB limit to the hard drive file size.
Convert to NTFS and then see if that solves your problem.

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

Still not a good idea to commit that many files to one zip file..

 

[LVTravel]

Mike, I agree with what you say about the size of the zip file but was
trying to get him to use a later version of WinZip in an attempt to enable
the extraction of the files. Previous version of WinZip had a 4 GB limit
but 9 and later has no effective limit (only available memory for the tables
I believe.)

From WinZip's web site: "The original Zip file format limited the number of
member files in a Zip file to 65,535, and the maximum size of both the Zip
file itself and any member file to 4 gigabytes. For all practical purposes,
the 64-bit extended format eliminates all these restrictions. Using the
extended format, the member file size, Zip file size, and number of member
files you can add to a Zip file are limited only by your system's
resources."