WinRAR Archive name and parameters dialog: time options


Archive name and parameters dialog: time options

Store modification, creation, last access time

Enable storing file modification, creation, last access times in archive. Supported only by archives. Only archive format allows to disable storing the file modification time. If one of these file times is not saved in archive, it will be assigned to the current system time when extracting.

You need to enable "Set creation time" and "Set last access time" options in part of extraction dialog to restore these times when extracting files. "Set modification time" is enabled by default.

High precision time format

If this option is disabled, file time is stored with 2 second precision for RAR 4.x and ZIP archives and with 1 second precision for RAR 5.x archives. Enabling this option slightly increases the archive size, but allows to preserve the file time with 0.0000001 second precision.

If this option is enabled for ZIP format, all three file times (modification, creation, last access) are stored with the high precision. Unlike RAR format, we cannot store a single file time with the high precision in ZIP.

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.