I'm using a custom Bash script running on a Linux machine to mass-duplicate FAT32-formatted USB drives.
I need to preserve Windows file attributes such as "hidden".
I use rsync
(or dd
with find
and mkdir
in newer version to force I/O sync for better stability and optimal bandwidth use).
I blindly tried -X
and -A
switches for rsync
, that are said to preserve some file attributes, but they don't seem to work for Windows file attributes.
Is there any way to read and write Windows file attributes in a Linux environment?
I could apply them after copying if there's no easier way.
I don't want to dd
an entire source filesystem, because that is going to be badly unoptimized, especially when you need to write hundreds of drives. Sometimes the drives are 16GB in capacity, and only a few GBs of files on them - and a dumb dd
would copy all 16GB, taking way to long for this to work in production.
I've searched the web, but looks like Linux extended attributes have nothing to do with Windows file attributes, and I haven't found any way to read and write this information (or just copy it with the files).
rsync
or manualfind
/mkdir
/dd
operation I use right now.fatattr
for one implementation of a tool using these.