Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!ucbvax!liverpool.ac.UK!SQ79 From: SQ79@liverpool.ac.UK (Mark Powell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Archive bit Message-ID: <8908091359.AA08065@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 9 Aug 89 11:11:44 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 18 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!) Mark Powell ARPAnet : sq79%liv.ac.uk@{ucl-cs.arpa,cs.ucl.ac.uk} USENET : ...!mcvax!ukc!liv.ac.uk!sq79