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The Incredible Self-Emptying Archive

Dr SnofeldDr Snofeld Registered User regular
edited September 2008 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
Long story short, I got a .zip file emailed to me for work, about a month ago now I think, containing a whole load of Word files. I didn't unzip it then. But now that I go to open it, it's empty. And the file size is much much smaller than I'd expect for the number of files in it. Any thoughts on what this could be? It's not the end of the world if it's unrecoverable, just means more work for me.

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Posts

  • PeregrineFalconPeregrineFalcon Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    Smart money says your work firewall ate the attachments.

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  • Dr SnofeldDr Snofeld Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    Well I work from home and I'm just using the basic Windows firewall, so it's not that. In fact I did open the archive when I got it, just didn't extract it. It was fine then.

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  • Satan.Satan. __BANNED USERS regular
    edited September 2008
    You either forgot that you had extracted it, it extracted on open (I had set up WinXP to do this) or something along those lines.

    The files are gone (as in no longer in that ZIP file), so it's time to start looking elsewhere for them.

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  • dmitdmit Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    Did you save the attachment to a folder somewhere or were you opening it from the mail client (both when you first got it and now that it's empty)?

    If you saved it to disk, what's the modification date on the archive - is it approximately the same point in time when you first opened it or some other date? If you didn't save it to disk, can you still get a copy from the mail server?

    dmit on
  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    Even if he did extract them, don't they usually just copy the contents, not remove them from the archive? Could your virus scanner have found them and quarantined them? Though I think in that case it would block the whole archive.

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  • darkgruedarkgrue Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    Satan. wrote: »
    You either forgot that you had extracted it, it extracted on open (I had set up WinXP to do this) or something along those lines.

    Extracting files from a ZIP archive don't remove them from the archive.

    You can delete files from the archive (from inside WinZIP or other archivers), but that doesn't happen as part of the extraction process. It's not even an option to have it happen.
    Satan. wrote: »
    The files are gone (as in no longer in that ZIP file), so it's time to start looking elsewhere for them.

    This is probably true. If the archive's size (not the size on disk, but the size) is impossibly small (like say, 22 bytes), the archive is in fact actually empty. If the archive contains data, but it is corrupt, WinZIP should tell you when you open the archive.

    Impossible to say what happened to the contents. Maybe you saved over it, the contents got stripped in transit, bad karma, or sunspots.

    darkgrue on
  • Dr SnofeldDr Snofeld Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    Bah. But really all it means is I have to spend a few hours tomorrow scanning and OCRing pages. And I've explained things to my boss so I won't get in trouble or anything.

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  • Satan.Satan. __BANNED USERS regular
    edited September 2008
    darkgrue wrote: »
    Satan. wrote: »
    You either forgot that you had extracted it, it extracted on open (I had set up WinXP to do this) or something along those lines.

    Extracting files from a ZIP archive don't remove them from the archive.

    You can delete files from the archive (from inside WinZIP or other archivers), but that doesn't happen as part of the extraction process. It's not even an option to have it happen.

    So Edit --> Cut, doesn't do anything? :| Not to mention there are plenty of options in WinZIP or others that will delete the files from the archive if you so desire.

    Seriously, this thread is over. They're gone!

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  • darkgruedarkgrue Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    Satan. wrote: »
    darkgrue wrote: »
    Satan. wrote: »
    You either forgot that you had extracted it, it extracted on open (I had set up WinXP to do this) or something along those lines.

    Extracting files from a ZIP archive don't remove them from the archive.

    You can delete files from the archive (from inside WinZIP or other archivers), but that doesn't happen as part of the extraction process. It's not even an option to have it happen.

    So Edit --> Cut, doesn't do anything? :| Not to mention there are plenty of options in WinZIP or others that will delete the files from the archive if you so desire.

    Read carefully. Doesn't happen as part of the extraction process. Right at the beginning of the sentence I said you can delete files from the archive by other means. Besides, there's no "Edit | Cut" menu in WinZip (not in 11.x, anyway), if there was that'd be explicitly deleting the file, and I pretty much covered that in the first case. "Extract" and "Extract All" won't delete files from an archive. WinZip doesn't delete source archives as part of the archive process. GZip does (although it deletes the source archive file, not leaves it empty). TAR doesn't. It'd be a legitimate point of confusion, and there's the answer. Sheesh. :|

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  • Satan.Satan. __BANNED USERS regular
    edited September 2008
    So you're pedantic in the first place, and still pedantic now.

    Gotcha

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