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Prologue: I used my Ubuntu file viewing GUI to move data files around and "clean house" a bit.

I started a new GRASS session and tried to add NED elevation rasters which I have successfully added before. I got the error message "`/home/greg/GRASS/Loc-Oakland/NED_elev_rasters/CopyNED1-9Oaklnd/10959312\10959312\w001001.adf' not recognised as a supported file format."

Since the software recognized it before, why the change? Is it because I moved the files? QGIS gave me the same sort of error message, although I had successfully loaded these files before. Thank you.

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1 Answer

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w001001.adf looks like an Arc/INFO binary GRID. In addition to the grid directory containing the *.adf files, grids are also comprised of an info directory (shared by all grids and coverages in that workspace). It sounds like you may have moved the grid directory (or the *.adf files) and not the info directory.

Two grids in a workspace will look something like this:

workspacename
    +---grid1
    |       dblbnd.adf
    |       hdr.adf
    |       metadata.xml
    |       prj.adf
    |       sta.adf
    |       w001001.adf
    |       w001001x.adf
    |
    +---grid2
    |       dblbnd.adf
    |       hdr.adf
    |       metadata.xml
    |       prj.adf
    |       sta.adf
    |       w001001.adf
    |       w001001x.adf
    |
    \---info
            arc.dir
            arc0000.dat
            arc0000.nit
            arc0001.dat
            arc0001.nit
            arc0002.dat
            arc0002.nit
            arc0003.dat
            arc0003.nit
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My source folder does have all those info files - looks like a complete set of them, per your example above. But still I get that error message about unsupported format! What else can I check? Thank you. – Catlike Apr 4 '12 at 19:43
1  
Put the files back exactly the way they were to start with. What did you do when you moved "data files around and "clean house" a bit"? – Luke Apr 5 '12 at 5:23
Hmm... Downloaded new elevation rasters for the same area (from the USGS seamless data warehouse) and now everything is loading fine. I will have to be careful about moving stuff around. – Catlike Apr 6 '12 at 2:52

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