Full paths in compressed files

[LJWolfe]

I hope I can explain this clearly.

I was using (I think) 11 Gravity on my previous computer (running the two systems more or less in parallel -- same folder setup -- while gradually moving my workflow from one to the other), which had a hard drive failure in mid February. I'd been planning on switching the backup process to the newer computer anyway, and the failure forced the issue.

I installed Reflector on the new computer, found a copy of the configuration file from the old computer, and used it as a reference to set the new one up to back up the same folders from the new computer it had been backing up from the old one.

The compressed files are being saved in the right place and directory structure. However, while the files backed up from the old computer include the full path in the compressed file, the files from the new computer don't. This has created a huge mess for my workflow .

I've triple-checked and both old and new profiles have "Create new separated backups" and "Use absolute paths" checked. Apparently that means something different in Reflector? Whatever. How do I get the old, preferred behavior back?

[cobian]

Optios- Archive- Absolute paths even in monolithic archives

[LJWolfe]

Thanks, but that option is already checked. Also, the files in question were created using Compress Files Individually.

I'm using 2.6.55 if that makes a difference.

[cobian]

If compress files individually is selected then everything is as expected. The option to include the path in the file is not available in this case in order to make decompression easy with the included tool.

[LJWolfe]

Well that sucks. Looks like I need to go back to Gravity where it works like I want it to.

Meanwhile, it'll take me a few days to recover from the mess Reflector made of my last week+ of backups.

[cobian]

I really don't understand the problem but well..

[LJWolfe]

I really don't understand the problem but well..

Just one example (not the only thing), sometimes I need to "prune" backups. For example, say I have a folder with large files, and do periodic full backups with incremental backups in between. If space gets tights I only need to keep the few things in the old full backups that are different in the newer full backup.

Until now I was able to do this quickly and easily by running a folder compare and deleting identical files from one of the backups. Now I can't do that because the lack of path means the zipped files are different even though the contents are the same. I can look at individual files to determine if the contents are the same or not, but doing it one file at a time for thousands of files is tedious and laborious.

Like I said, just one example, but it means my choices seem to be replacing Reflector with Gravity, or having a mess between backups produced through February and backups from March going forward. Or maybe buy a newer, bigger backup drive, but that's not really a solution.

[cobian]

So just to be clear, you want to have the full path on the archives even for *individual* file compression?

This could be "fixed" in the future.

[LJWolfe]

So just to be clear, you want to have the full path on the archives even for *individual* file compression?

This could be "fixed" in the future.

Yes, "fixed" to produce something like this zipped file created by Cobian 11 last month, using individual compression:

Capture.png (20.77 KiB) Viewed 264 times

Thanks.

[cobian]