What is Archive?

[linardni]

What does Archive mean and what's its utility found under Properties of any Folder?

[QwertyManiac]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive
Some info there...

About that right click archive, it means that this folder is to be archived in a backup prolly...

[Udaya Maurya]

Archieve is the compressed file of the files that can be many formats like *.exe *.zip *rar etc...

[vijay_7287]

a collection of different set of files under one file is known as an archieve
it need not be compressed all the time ....

[LordDJ]

The archive bit was (is) used for backup purposes. The backup program would scan thru files and backup those with the archive bit set. After backing up, it resets this bit, indicating that the file was backed up. Whnever a file is modified, its archive bit is set so as to inform the backup app that the file has been modified and that it needs to be backed up.

Apart from this an archive genberally means a collection. With time it has come to mean (partially, though purists would disagree) a file comprising a collection of files either compressed (like zip or rar) or uncomressed (like tar).