I have done some further testing and I still have problems that I believe are connected to the clearing/restoring of the archive attribute. I am summarising my set up and conclusions in the hope that you might be able to suggest a cause of my problem. Many thanks in anticipation.

I am using Vista Ultimate (UAC enabled). I am the only user on my PC and I am logged in as an Administrator. I am using Cobian v 9.5.1.212 installed as a service using the local system account.

I have made the following changes to Cobian’s default settings via Options – Engine: (i) “Use several methods for copy” – added tick; (ii)”Check CRC for copy operations” – added tick; (iii) “Copy NFTS permissions” – added tick; (iv) “Park first full backup” – removed tick; (v) “Delete empty folders” – added tick; (vi) “Apply masks to subdirectories” – added tick; (vii) changed format of date part of timestamp used for separating backups from “yyyy-mm-dd” to “d-m-yyyy”.

I created 2 Cobian backup tasks – “MB” & “MB-M”. MB is set to run daily at 17:30 and MB-M is set to run daily at 17:45. MB backs up personal files from C: to four destinations (3 are on external hard disks and the 4th on a second physical hard drive in the PC [not the drive containing the O/S]). The directory containing the backed up personal files in one of the MB destinations is the source directory for MB-M (MB-M backs up to 2 destinations – both are on external hard drives).
MB is an incremental backup but “Create separated backups using timestamps” is not ticked (MB has “Full copies to keep”=0 & “Make a full backup every”=0).
MB-M is an incremental backup with “Create separated backups using timestamps” being ticked (MB-M has “Full copies to keep”=4 & “Make a full backup every”=7).

For both the MB & MB-M tasks “Use file attribute logic” is ticked and “Clear archive attribute” is ticked.
Before the first Cobian task was run all my personal files on C: had their archive attribute checked. There are approx 11000 personal files that are being backed up by MB.

The conclusions of my testing are as follows:

1) Cobian is clearing the archive attributes of the backed up file when it does its backup task. This is demonstrated in 3 ways: (i) using the “Verbose” setting for the log I can see an entry in the log that states that “The archive bit of the attributes for ‘name of source file’ has been cleared”; (ii) if I examine the properties of my personal files after the Cobian task has been completed I can see that archive attribute has been cleared; (iii) if I manually cause the Cobian task to be rerun immediately after it has finished then no files are copied – either for MB or MB-M – which is as it should be.

2) If I leave my PC to run Cobian as per its schedule or wait for a period of time before forcing a run of the MB task, then the next time that the MB task runs MB backs up 11000 files. When I saw that a back up of all the files was occurring I looked at the personal files that had not yet been backed up (ie the Cobian task had not yet reached these files) and I found that the archive attribute of these files had not been cleared. If I I looked at the personal files that had been backed up (ie the Cobian task had dealt with these files) I found that the archive attribute of these files had been cleared.

3) When I found the problem described in (2) I looked at the copies of my personal files in the directory (one of the destinations for MB) that is the source directory for MB-M. For these files the archive attribute was cleared until MB had copied the file and thus reset the archive attribute of the file in the destination directory. This was as expected.

Thus, I conclude that my problem is due to the archive attributes of my personal files somehow being reset before the Cobian task starts at its next scheduled time (ie this resetting of the archive attributes of my personal files is happening between the scheduled runs of the Cobian task). However it seems that this resetting of archive attributes is only occurring for the personal files on the C: drive that are the source files for MB; it does not seem to happen to the files (on one of the external hard drives) that are the source files for MB-M.

On a couple of occasions when I have looked at the archive attributes of my personal files between runs of the MB backup task I have noted that for some files (the files that are early in the backup order) the archive attribute is ticked while for the other files (those files that are later in the backup order) the archive attribute is clear. It is almost as if something is working its way through the files resetting the archive attribute as it goes?? When I forced a run of MB after noting this situation a large number of files were copied (some 7000 files) but not all my personal files (some 11000 files) – this is consistent with the noted situation of some of the archive attributes being cleared while the other archive attributes were ticked. And sometimes (between scheduled runs of the backup task) I find that the archive attributes of my personal files have not been reset so the MB backup works as it should with no files copied as none have changed. It seems that the longer the time gap between the task runs the more likely it is that the archive attributes will be reset.

Every time that I have let the tasks run on the schedule (ie with 24 hour gaps between task runs) the archive attributes of my personal files on C: have been reset. BUT the source files for MB-M (which are on the external hard drive) have never been reset.

A backup needs to work in the background in a predictable and regular pattern. Hence the problem has undermined (to some degree) my confidence in Cobian. To keep having to check a backup program somewhat defeats its purpose.

Can you suggest any possible causes of this problem??

Can you suggest any tests to determine what it is that is resetting the archive attributes??

In particular, are there any functions within the Vista Ultimate O/S that resets the archive attribute?? For example indexing by the O/S, the Volume Shadow Copy Service etc, etc.

When you said that you had Cobian working without problems with Vista with archive attributes behaving as expected, which version of Vista are you using?? For example the Volume Shadow Copy Service is present on Vista Ultimate (my O/S) but not on Vista Home Basic or Home Premium.

It does not seem that my problem is general to other users so this suggests that my problem is due to my set up – either directly or in the way my set up interacts with Cobian. Not much comfort to me but comfort to you (if you needed it!!).

I would be very interested if anyone else has experienced problems with the same sort of characteristics.

Again, many thanks for your help.

I only can guarantee a thing: Cobian Backup will never set the archive attribute back.

There must be some other cause for this. If you read the old posts: in NINE years the program has been out, you will never see such a problem described in the forum.

You maybe have spme indexing program in the background regularly doing something to your files? Just guessing.

You can uncheck "use archive attributes" in the task. In that case, the program will rely on the file's timestamp. (works only when overwriting old backups)

If you mean Cobian Backup, no. First only the method of timestamp was used. The archive attribute method was introduced first in version 4, back in 2004.

If you mean generally, then yes: the purpose of the archive attribute has always been to be used by backup programs.

In theory, the indesing program shouldn't change the archive attribute as far as i know.