I know why these problem occurs in Windows 7 (the resulting path contains a number of characters exceeding the OS's designated limit).

The thing is, does anyone know where the problematic files/folders go if the problem is encountered? Especially if the file was cut and pasted; I was moving 3.7k files earlier when this problem occurred, and due to the sheer number of files I wasn't able to keep track of exactly where each one went. Are the files still in the old location, or do they just vanish? I can't find half of them in either the new or the old location, and I'm getting a headache trying to navigate to and fro.