Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!imagen!atari!towns From: towns@atari.UUCP (John Townsend) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Archive bit Message-ID: <1651@atari.UUCP> Date: 14 Aug 89 23:21:11 GMT References: <8908091359.AA08065@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 23 in article <8908091359.AA08065@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, SQ79@liverpool.ac.UK (Mark Powell) says: > > > Bit 5 of a file mode is the archive bit. This is to do with backing up files. > When a file is backed up it's archive bit is set. When it is next written to > the bit is cleared. From this senario the disk back up program can tell whether > a file has been modified since the last back up and if so back up the file > otherwise leave it. This enables an incremental backup to be performed i.e. > back up your hard disk totally every month, and backup just the files that have > changed every week. Unfortunatley this procedure doesn't work on the old TOSes > (or so I'm informed) TOS 1.4 is said to fix this. > I have seen plenty of files on my disks with this bit set. You may be running > a different TOS from me though. I've got a UK TOS 1.0 dated 20/11/85 > i.e. 20th November for you in the US who don't put the date in ascending or > descending order of significance (make your minds up!) > You have it backwards. In TOS 1.4, the bit is set when a file is created or modified. The backup program should clear it after backing up the file. -- John Townsend Atari Corp.