zip (was: Re: Disk archival techniques)

[Randy McLaughlin]

From: "John Foust" <jfoust at threedee.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 2:02 PM


 > There's plenty of file system meta-data out there to confound
> this process.  Blindly archiving and un-archiving will destroy
> data that's not inside the file.  There's a lot to be said for
> archiving images of entire filesystems.  What, timestamps
> aren't important?  Creation dates as well as last-modified dates?
> Archive bits?  At least 'tar' preserves Unix's groups and
> permissions to a reasonable degree.
>
> The Mac has always had data and resource forks and all the
> cross-platform confusion that goes with them.  Microsoft added
> hooks to NTFS to let files have split forks like this; lately
> they've been used by spyware and viruses to hide payloads.
>
> I recall file comment fields in Amiga filenames: rarely used for
> practical applications, but there none the less.  Even AmigaDOS's
> own operations were cruel to them; I seem to remember that
> its early "copy" commands didn't copy these notes but "diskcopy"
> obviously would.  Similarly, even today, Windows doesn't preserve
> the timestamp on directories when 'xcopy'-ing from place to place.
> What, timestamps aren't valuable info?
>
> - John

All of the tools I've been using includes the meta-data available but the 
data I'm archiving is for systems that either didn't impliment such data or 
as in CP/M v3 usually wasn't implimented.  What meta-data is being preserved 
is often when I transfered the data to DOS and the like, some may be 
interested but it does not mean that a similar file with a different date is 
"newer" or "older" going by the meta-date info.

Dates and hand written notes have been issues in some cases and from time to 
time I've included scans of labels in the archives.

Some of the original DRI archives I sent to Gaby are examples especially of 
the working disks that were never distributed outside of DRI.  On these 
disks that contain up to three versions (*.A86, *.BAK, and the deleted file) 
of the source code being developed I included teledisk images so people 
could look at these unique disks byte by byte.

On other DRI disks that were normal distribution disks I only included the 
files since there was no "hidden" information not in the listed files.

Xcopy can preserve the meta-data but defaults to not keeping it (stupid 
windoze).


Randy
www.s100-manuals.com