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 RAR archives. Only RAR 5.0 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 Advanced 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.

Preserve source files last access time

By default the last access time of source files is changed after archiving. We can enable this option if we wish to preserve the original value of this time. This option keeps the original last access time of archiving files, but it does not control which timestamps are to be stored in archive. For example, if we wish to save the last access time to archive and preserve the last access time of source files, we need to use this and "Store last access time" options together. This option can prevent to open some files, which can be opened without it.

Include files: of any time / older than / newer than / before / 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, creation or last access 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 "before" or "after" options you may choose only those files which modification, creation or last access time is older or newer than specified date.

"Newer than" and "after" options also include files matching the specified date exactly. "Older than" and "before" exclude such files.

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.