"Compressed (zipped) folder is invalid or corrupt"

I recently had to reformat my hard drive, so I put all my important files into one folder, compressed it, and put it on an external back up drive (it ended up being 4 gigs btw ). Once I got my computer fixed up, I plugged in the external drive, and tried to unpack my folder. Nogood: it (standard Windows program for zipping/unzipping) said "Compressed (zipped) folder is invalid or corrupt." As you can imagine, I'm pretty damn anxious to unpack this baby. One possible problem is that the external backup drive uses a FAT filesystem (I think) while my drive is NTFS.

I'd appreciate any help you guys can give!

:major

 

fat and fat32 dont like files that are larger then 4 gig, so if your external was partioned that way, your probably screwed. Is it more then four gig or exactly 4. Might try a different unzipping ulitity as well. Might have more luck that way.

 

4,305,616,896 bytes which registers as exactly 4.0gigs on the properties panel is its size. Could you recommend some utility that can handle .zip files? I haven't found any besides winzip.

 

Winrar will work. After 30 or so days trial period ends and you get a nag screen to buy but just close the window and it works forever.

I think tugzip is also recommended which is available at Majorgeeks.com

 

Winrar will work on .zip files. After 30 or so days trial period ends and you get a nag screen to buy but just close the window and it works forever.

I think tugzip is also recommended which is available at Majorgeeks.com

 

No more problems! I downloaded ALZip (using the list of archive programs on wikipedia), tested the file, found the corrupted file (yes, only one baddie in 4 gigs), couldn't remove it, hopelessly ordered an unzip, and it worked.

Thanks for your help.

:major