Make your own Free Cabinet Files (.cab)

Like many people i have Thousands of old files that i rarely need to use but just cant do without.
By Archiving them into Cabinet files, you can save alot of disk space than you would by simply putting them into ordinary zip files, Making them ideal for old wedding photos, videos and so on.

You dont need any Special software for this simple 2 step procedure, all of the software is already installed on windows so this wont cost you a penny and with no risk of downloading anything harmful.

In Windows 2000 and all other versions since then like XP and so on, there is a Hidden Dos program called MakeCab.exe which allows users to create compressed Cabinet files, We cant open this program directly so we need to do some typing.

Cabinet files are like the Big Brother of Zip folders and are read only, you can still open them like you would any other Zip folder, they are just as easily sent over the internet and opened by someone who maybe doesnt have zip capabilities.


Step 1.

Choose your files that you want to Compress and put them in a folder, I used C:\files (change it to whatever suits you).

Now you need to create a directive file for the MakeCab.exe program.
The basics are listed below, In NotePad just copy and paste the following text and list the files at the bottom like i have.


.OPTION EXPLICIT ; Will Generate errors for mistakes
.set DiskDirectoryTemplate=CDROM ; All cabinets go into a folder
.Set CompressionType=MSZIP ;** All files are compressed to cabinet files
.Set UniqueFiles="OFF"
.Set Cabinet=on

; Destination Folder
.Set DiskDirectory1=c:\cabinets

; File name for the new cab file
.Set CabinetNameTemplate=Sample.cab

; Files to be added are listed below
c:\files\a.txt
c:\files\b.txt


In the menu click Save As, Where it says 'Save as Type:' change it to All Files, Save it as c:\a.ddf .

Everything that follows the ; semicolon is treated as a comment and ignored by the compiler, you dont need the comments in the actual file but it will help you understand what you typed and where to put stuff.

Step 2.

Open the start menu and click run, Type cmd and click ok.

You should now see the command prompt window, type the following:

makecab /f c:\a.ddf

If youre Successful some information should appear and the folder c:\cabinets will be created with your file inside of it, if you do get errors the cabinet file wont be created, look at the errors listed and you should easily understand them enough to correct any mistakes and try again.

If you only want to compress a single file then skip the first 2 steps and in command prompt type.

makecab C:\files\simple.txt c:\Cabinet.cab

This compresses the simple.txt file into a file called Cabinet.cab



And thats it, Now you can Archive to your hearts content.