Transferring Long Path Names to a USB Drive - (formatting a WD G-Drive)

Question

Problem.
I want to use a WD USB G-Drive to off load some data from my Dell E7540 laptop, that has Windows 10.
Since the WD drive is a G-Drive, it comes already formatted for a Mac, (all G-Drives comes configured for Mac’s), so I have to reformat it for Windows 10.

My concern is about the laptop path name lengths, and whether or not I will be getting messages about the path lengths being too long when I cut and paste directories or copy the whole laptop over to the G-Drive. I would like to set things up so that I will not get any messages about the path lengths being too long so that all files and directories will get transferred without an issue.

What I know about my laptop.
The laptop is NTFS.
The Long Path Name designation thing on the laptop was never configured – So, I don’t know what the ramifications of this may be.

Open Group Policy Editor (Press Windows Key and type gpedit.msc and hit Enter key)
Navigate to the following directory: Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem

See Picture #1 – attached.

I found a little program that checks to see if your computer has any path lengths that are longer than XYZ characters. There are quite a few directory paths that are longer that 260 characters. Some of them were made by me storing stuff on the PC and some of them were created by Microsoft.
The ones made by Microsoft seem to paths to Windows updates.

See Picture #2 – attached.

Note that my laptop does not have AMD – it is Intel.
Not sure if it has any relevance here.

See Picture #3 – attached.

Questions
1 - Since MS put files on my PC that have path lengths longer than 255, does that mean that they will get transferred without me enabling the Win32 long path length bit?
2 - Why did MS put long path lengths on my PC when they should have seen that the long path length bit was not enabled? After all MS has to know that people will try to back up their files or the whole PC at some point in the future.
3- Should I now enable the Long Path Length bit on my Windows 10 Dell E7450?
4 - When I reformate the G-Drive what file formatting option should I use – Fat32, exFat, NTFS or something else?
5 - Also, I have an old desktop Windows 7 machine, (NTFS I think), where I would like to off load some files from to the WD G-Drive after I reformat it.

So, if I use the Windows 10 laptop to reformate the G-Drive, will the Windows 7 machine be able to transfer data (maybe long paths) to the G-Drive without losing any data?

Executive Summary.
(Things I have to figure out to avoid data lose and be able to transfer long path lengths)
How does my Dell E7450 have to be configured before I reformat the WD G-Drive?
How should I designate the reformatting of the WD G-Drive? - (NTFS etc.?).
Will I be able to transfer data to the G-Drive from my Windows 7 desktop without losing data and am I going to have path length transfer issues?
Is there such a thing as having to set something on the G-Drive that allows long paths lengths?
Will I have to edit the path lengths on the E7450 and the Windows 7 desktop to be shorter than 255/260 characters before I transfer data.

Oh, one more thing – the maximum size of the G-Drive that can be used with a Dell E7450.
I’m not totally sure but I think the maximum size of a drive that can be used with an E7450 is 2TB. If so, does that mean that I can’t use a 5TB US G-Drive with the E7450? Would Windows 10 and the E7450 even care that the external USB drive is 5TB?
Would partitioning the 5TB USB drive into 3 drives (2TB, 2TB, & 1TB) solve this problem, and can a 5TB USB drive even be partitioned/repartitioned into small drives?

What did I miss?

I wish there was some kind of a flow chart/decision-tree thing that could help answer these questions.

I hope there is someone out there that can explain what to do and how to set things up for a great outcome.

Thanks in advance,228856-3-transferring-pictures.pdf
Paul101.

(Sorry - I had a hard time figuring out how to attach 3 pictures so I'm going to put all 3 into a single PDF document).
(Sorry – I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to make the required tag work - this was the worst part of posting my questions - I hope someone sees my questions and somehow gets the correct experts to see them).

Answer 1

Lot to digest here. I would apply the group policy setting to enable long paths on both machines and reboot them both. Format the external drive as NTFS. Pick a small folder or folders with long names to test with. Use robocopy to copy the folders to the external drive.

https://adamtheautomator.com/robocopy/

Robocopy will produce a report that tells you how many files were copied. Use a DIR command or Powershell get-childitem or with the explorer right click and check the properties to verify that the file counts of the source and destination match.

Then copy the files to the destination pc and again verify the file counts.

If you don't want to enable long paths, I have seen robocopy process long files names even without that policy being set. Again, test with a small subset of files that have long paths. Your problem will be that other apps like the Windows explorer might not be able to properly read those folders.