How to Create a File Archive

by Vanessa C. Sales Manager of DefendX Software

A file archive is a process of storing information in a compressed or coded form. It is sometimes also referred to as optical storage or electronic data storage.

Let us consider a file with one million characters of data, including spaces and lines. It is made up of blocks of five hundred bytes of data. Each block contains three dots. An archive can consist of five thousand files of this size.

Now, if you lose one byte of the original data, what do you do? It is tough to figure out where that one byte is. That is why file archiving is necessary. Files are organized in archives, so they can be retrieved when needed. They can also be retrieved without losing any of the original information.

Data is stored in packets. The smallest packet is sixteen bits in size. The smallest two-bit packet is called an image block. This is enough for storing five hundred bytes of data. However, if you store a bit more than that, it will not be necessary to put more space into your file.

In a zip file, there are many compression algorithms applied. In the word processing application Word, each of the four formats that are listed on the ribbon controls has its purpose.

The first line is the description of the file and its location. This includes the extension and area of the data.

The second line is the extension. The extensions are arranged in groups of two. If you do not know the extension of a file, go to the Get Info tab in the ribbon and look it up. This will give you the extension for the file.

The next line will indicate the format of the header lines. There are eight header lines, each one starting with the extension. Most of these extensions are for security reasons.

The third line is the actual data. Most of the information is in binary. There is a small amount of text that is alphabetic. Sometimes you will find a date for the date header.

The next line is the file name. If there is only one header line, the file name will start with extension and the extension for the extension of the file. This means that the extension for the extension of the file will be the full pathname. If there is more than one header line, then you have to make sure that they all start with extension.

Then, the time the file was written, the time when the file was last modified, the user name and password, the date and time the file was created, the file type, and the file size. These can be changed by editing the information in the time header.

For each of the fifteen header lines, there is information about the data in the file. The first line is the date and time, the second line is the length of the file, the type of the file, the user name and password, the file type, and the file size.