Now that Windows is up and running after swapping hard drives, I'm
trying to restore some files where dates were significant. It seems
when I copy a file by itself or in groups of FILES, the dates are
preserved, but if I include a folder the date modified gets set to the
current date. How do I copy the folders so the modification dates are
preserved? I tried to recall how to use the ms-dos style restore
command, but restore /? yielded "bad command or filename" indicating
it wasn't available, and Microsoft Backup only seems to work with
their own backup files.
The files I want are stored on a virtual hard drive, and I can share
them with either a virtual windows 98SE (cloned from the real computer
I'm trying to restore them to, I just boot the backup partition) or a
Virtual Windows XP Professional computer.
Even if I could access them from the host Vista 64 OS, trying to
access a Vista share will make a Windows 98SE computer crash, either
virtual or real.
Restore will not work, as that is a different procedure.
As a last resort, it would be possible to copy back and let the copy create
the folders, then use a Touch utility to fix the folder dates.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"SlickRCBD" <slickr...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1afbf50a-ae88-4933...@v36g2000yqv.googlegroups.com...
I initially used XCOPY for everything. Then once I got Windows98
working on the new drive and noticed the problem, I tried the normal
procedure of dragging from the network share to the folder they
belonged.
Next, I tried select all, copy, paste
Then I got the idea to stick them in a solid WinRAR archive and
decompress them to a folder. I figured I could just overwrite the ones
with the bad dates. Even that didn't work, which surprised me.
Give that there are "freshen" and other options in winRAR, I'd expect
that to have worked.
So, how do I preserve the dates on the folders? Some registry entry I
need to change? I don't see anything in TweakUI.
If you use a copy procedure that copies folders instead of creating them
then there would not be a problem. This is what disk imaging programs do -
they just mindlessly copy the bits and don't concern themselves with the
file system. You can't do that for a copy into an existing file system, of
course. The copy procedure would have to use Windows to create the folder
then update the folder details as appropriate. That's what copy functions
in more advanced file systems do, because there are many folder settings
other than the date that need to be restored.
I am not aware of a copy procedure that will copy folder settings for a file
system other than NTFS, but, as you state, I would have expected that a
restore from archive might have done what you need. Perhaps you should
investigate other archiving utilities, especially newer ones created when
folder properties had become relevant, to see if any have options regarding
restoring folder settings. It's not a technically difficult thing to do,
it's just the the OS won't do it for you if you create, rather than copy, a
folder..
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"SlickRCBD" <slickr...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ad2370a6-9e0a-4c45...@a21g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever tried Microsoft Backup to
do a restore. Will using Microsoft Backup on the virutal machine allow
me to use the output file on the real one?