Archiving Files on CD - Compress with WinRAR

Q

Archiving Files on CD - Compress with WinRAR

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A

If you have a lots of personal files on your computer system, you should consider to archive or backup them to a CD to avoid any losses if something happen to your computer.
One easy way to backup your files is to copy the folder where your files are located to a CD. But this could lead to problems like:
The file names contain special characters that the CD burning software can not support.
The file directory tree is too deep for the ISO 9660 file system to be created on the CD.
The directory and file structure created on the CD may restrict you from restoring the CD on other operating systems.
Without compression, much more space is required on the CD.
A better way of archiving your personal files to a CD is compress all directories and files into a single archive file with WinRAR. Then copy the single archive file to the CD. The advantages are obvious:

No directory name or file name issues with the ISO 9660 file system to be created on the CD.
Compression reduces the disk space required on the CD.
The single archive file can be restored on any operating systems.
Here is what I did compress all of my personal files into 3 archive files to be copied to a data CD. My personal files are under the 5 folders: \xx\file2002, \xx\file2003, ..., \xx\file2006.

1. Create a work directory C:\archive.
2. Run the following commands in a command window:


C:\>cd \xx
C:\xx >mkdir \archive

C:\xx >WinRAR a -afrar -r \archive\file2002.rar file2002\*.*
   (Using the 8-3 file name format to avoid restoring problems.
   (WinRAR progress window shows up.
   (The compression process takes a couple of minutes.

C:\xx >WinRAR a -afrar -r \archive\file2003.rar file2003\*.*

...

C:\xx >WinRAR a -afrar -r \archive\file2006.rar file2006\*.*

C:\xx >copy \progra~1\winrar\WinRAR.exe \archive\WinRAR.exe
        1 file(s) copied.
   (I want to put a copy WinRAR.exe on the CD too.

C:\xx >dir \archive
<DIR>          .
<DIR>          ..
    10,577,076 file2002.rar
   113,907,373 file2003.rar
   121,605,487 file2004.rar
   129,867,837 file2005.rar
   333,239,038 file2006.rar
       915,968 WinRAR.exe
6 File(s)    710,112,779 bytes
2 Dir(s)  21,970,386,944 bytes free

2007-11-26, 6388🔥, 0💬