Overwrite old files only (when copying/extracting)?

[azagahl]

Hi, is there anyway to extract a bunch of archives into the same place, WITHOUT overwriting newer files with older files? In other words, if you have a bunch of files, how can you get the set of all unique file names with the newest choices only when there is a conflict?

I have a few GB of archives (mostly ZIP) and the best tool for extracting them seems to be TUGZip. However, of all the tools I tried (TUGZip, IZarc, ZipGenius, PowerArchiver, 7zip) there is no automatic option like "always overwrite older files".

Also, extracting into different directories and using Windows Explorer to merge the directories doesn't help, Windows just wants to overwrite everything.

Any ideas?

[suryad]

WinRAR has that option. AFAIK.

[azagahl]

Thanks, WinRAR works!

[suryad]

Great. Out of curiosity, since you have more experience with the zip formats than me since I stick with RAR mostly, but doesnt it seem like RAR compresses files a bit more than ZIP does?

[jftuga]

Rar does indeed compress more than Zip. But, you can open a Zip file on XP w/o having to have any extra software. The Rar algorithm is much newer than Zip (by years & years) so that would help explain why it compresses better. Rar also compresses multiple files at once (called 'solid') while Zip only compresses each file individually. This also helps Rar to compress better.

-John

[Jeremy]

Just because it's newer doesn't mean it's better. In the case of ZIP and RAR, sure. But, Microsoft Cabinets compress better than 7zip. 7zip is newer than .cab...

[suryad]

Interesting. So are .cab files usable like rar and zip formats? Like is there a cabinet file making utility? Would that be more advisable to use then?

[Zxian]

Just because it's newer doesn't mean it's better. In the case of ZIP and RAR, sure. But, Microsoft Cabinets compress better than 7zip. 7zip is newer than .cab...

Interesting. So are .cab files usable like rar and zip formats? Like is there a cabinet file making utility? Would that be more advisable to use then?

CAB files may smaller than 7zip. It really depends on the type of data you're trying to compress.

To make cab files, you can just use makecab that's included with Windows.

For general purpose archiving, I use WinRAR. For something I want to send to someone over the net, I'll use 7-zip. For silent installers, I'll try using both a 7zip SFX or IExpress and use whichever one comes out smaller.