Enabling Case Sensitivity in Windows
I recently needed to download a large number of files from a Linux server using SCP, which would take nearly 12 hours. When i checked the next day this transfer had stopped to ask if I wanted to overwrite a file. This was because two files had the same name, differing only in case.
I remembered there was a registry setting that could set the NTFS filesystem to be case sensitive[0], but I’d rather not do that on this workstation. I did a Google search anyway, but then I found there is a newer way to do this which is on a per-folder basis instead of globally[1].
There is a command called “fsutil.exe” that can adjust a lot of filesystem settings, one of them is “SetCaseSensitiveInfo”, which controls if the folder is case sensitive or not.
fsutil.exe file SetCaseSensitiveInfo C:\folder enable
When I restarted the download, it still didn’t work, because that command only applies it to the specified folder, and any new folders created after. It does not apply to existing sub-folders. The following PowerShell command will apply the setting to any existing folder.
Get-ChildItem C:\folder -Recurse |
? {$_.PSIsContainer} |
% { fsutil.exe file SetCaseSensitiveInfo $_.FullName enable }
References
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/case-sensitivity
PowerShell tips windows