archive

[Tonnic]

hi, since everyone is asking non-monkey island questions in this section I figured I could to.

 

If you right-click a file (in windows) and choose properties. there are three check boxes:

 

-read only

-hidden

-archive

 

I wondered: what does archive do??? :confused:

 

-Tonnic-

[brief]

From Windows Help:

 

The Archive attribute (+a) is used to mark files that have changed since they were previously backed up. The xcopy command uses these Archive attributes.

 

Here's an example of how it works (you'd have to run these commands in DOS mode):

 

Suppose you want to back up a bunch of files in a folder to diskette (drive A, for instance), but don't want to use compression programs like Winzip. You would first set all of the files in said folder as Archive files, using the attrib command.

 

  attrib +a *.*

 

Then, you would use the xcopy command to copy the files to drive A...

 

  xcopy *.* a: /m

 

The /m parameter tells xcopy to copy only files with the Archive attribute, and to set the files that's been completely copied back to normal, so if not all of the files were copied onto the disk in drive A, you can pop in a new disk, and repeat the xcopy, and it'll continue where it left off, until all files that have been marked as Archive have been copied.