archive attribute

Thanks Joseph - I also use XCOPY to do backups (DOS rules OK!) and found the /D a good alternative. 

But it really is a bit of a work-around and we shouldn't have to go to this trouble.

IF JEEVAN YADAV OR ANYONE FROM MICROSOFT IS MONITORING THESE MESSAGES THEN PLEASE GIVE US A PROPER ANSWER.

PLEASE WILL YOU TELL US HOW TO STOP WINDOWS 8 FROM RE-SETTING THE ARCHIVE BITS IN BETWEEN USER-RUN BACKUPS. WHEN THIS HAPPENS OUR BACKUPS COPY EVERY SINGLE FILE TO BACKUP EACH AND EVERY TIME WHICH TAKES AGES AND IS A REAL PAIN.

same problem, but seems to affect only files in "My Pictures". it's quite aggravating when one wants to run incremental back-ups but the system runs full back-ups because win8 resets the file attribute for no apparent reason. a fix would be most appreciated.

I understand that the incremental back up only does files with the A attribute set.  The thing is that after I restart the system, all of the files that were backed up have the attribute reset, causing the next incremental back up to backup everything.

I did some additional checking.  One thing that I did not mention is that I began to use SHUTDOWN.EXE to turn the computer off.  This allows me to do it with one double click.  I didn't think that was important, but it appears that is resetting the flag.

same problem, but seems to affect only files in "My Pictures". it's quite aggravating when one wants to run incremental back-ups but the system runs full back-ups because win8 resets the file attribute for no apparent reason. a fix would be most appreciated. 

I use XCOPY to do my backups and I found that the /D  (without a date) setting checks the attribute flag and the dates of the original vs. backup copies and only copies files with a newer date on the original and the archive set.  I added that /D setting while trying to fix the problem.

These are the XCOPY setting I use:  /M /D /H /R /Y /E /C

Hi Joseph,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

From your issue description I understand that you want to know why the archive attribute get resets between backups in Windows 8

Normal/full backups: All files that have been selected are backed up, regardless of the setting of the archive attribute. When a file is backed up, the archive attribute is cleared. If the file is later modified, this attribute is set, which indicates that the file needs to be backed up.

 

 

Incremental backups: Designed to create backups of files that have changed since the most recent normal or incremental backup. The presence of the archive attribute indicates that the file has been modified and only files with this attribute are backed up. When a file is backed up, the archive attribute is cleared. If the file is later modified, this attribute is set, which indicates that the file needs to be backed up.

 

For any Windows related assistance in the future, feel free to contact us and we will be glad to help.

I still have not solved this problem.  Every time I shut down the Win8 computer, the Archive attribute gets reset for all of the files in My Documents.  This happens with both the SHUTDOWN.EXE and the regular Win8 shutdown.