Archive name and parameters dialog: time options

WinRAR

Archive name and parameters dialog: time options


High precision modification time

If this option is disabled, file modification time is stored with two seconds precision. It is enough for FAT file system, but insufficient for NTFS. Enabling this option may slightly increase the archive size, but it allows WinRAR to preserve the file time with 0.0000001 second precision.

In ZIP archives the high precision modification time is stored in the same data structure as creation and last access times. So if you enable this option when archiving to ZIP, WinRAR will write all three times to resulting archive. You will still be able to choose times to set in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog. RAR format stores file times individually.

"Store creation time" and "Store last access time"

Windows file systems keep three different time fields for each file: last modification, creation and last access. By default WinRAR stores only last modification time, but using these options you may enable storing of creation and last access time. It may be useful for backups. Supported only by RAR archives. ZIP archives always preserves these file times if "High precision modification time" option is enabled.

Note that you need to enable "Set creation time" and "Set last access time" options in the "Advanced" part of extraction dialog to restore these times when extracting files.

Include files: of any time / older than / newer than / modified before / modified after

The default value of this option is "any time", so WinRAR will archive all selected files regardless of their time stamp. But changing it to "older than" or "newer than" you may force WinRAR to archive only those files which modification time is older or newer than a specified number of days, hours and minutes. For example, it can be useful if you wish to archive only files modified in last 3 days. Using "modified before" or "modified after" you may choose only those files which modification time is older or newer than concrete specified date.

Set archive time to: current system time / original archive time / latest file time

Default value for this option is the "current system time", so every new or modified archive receives the current system time as modification file time. But you also may set this option to the "original archive time" to prevent the archive time from changing or to the "latest file time" to set the modification time of a changed archive to the time of newest file in the archive.