I'm also baffled. Before I replied to original question about the time/date stamps, I inserted a backup drive in my computer and compared the contents of a couple of folders on the backup drive with the same contents of the original folders just to make sure and the times and dates were identical.
Could you post screen shots showing where the time and date stamps have changed?
Good morning....here are a couple of screenshots: the first shows the top level subfolders right under CommWork and the second shows the next level down within one those subfolders (2010 SEA).
I don't know if permissions and access would cause affects in this regard but I had used MiniTool Partition Wizard to format the D partition on the SSD and the security tab for it doesn't show either of my user accounts specifically:
Both SYSTEM and Administrators group have full control and Users group only have Read & Execute + List folders content permissions.
Thank you for taking the time to look at these for me.----dpwoodpecker
I forgot to mention that I didn't click the box "copy NTFS permissions" (under Options) in the configuration used. Also forgot to share that I've had the external HDD for awhile and had created the G partition using the old laptop running XP. In using the HDD with this laptop running Windows 7, the admin user account now has ownership and the standard user account also have full control of the data partition (G) on it. By the way this same problem of subfolders not retaining original dates also happened awhile back in using SyncBack.
I clicked on "last page" link and missed reading ignatzatsonic's response....and checked as you showed - the original created dates are preserved. See sample:
This was helpful for me to clarify then that I need to be able to maintain the "modified" time/date of the source subfolders in doing the sync/backups - would that be possible at all with these programs?
Hmmm....regarding the "modified" dates in the second pic in post 42 above:
Source is G drive; copy is on D.
There are 6 files shown for each drive. Curiously, 4 of them retained the modified date. Two others did not: hongkong and Thai tour, which show a new modified date of "yesterday 8:25 PM".
What would account for only 2 of 6 getting a new modified date?
Here’s a couple of pix of my folder trees showing modified dates for a series of folders.
The first is the source D drive, showing modified dates ranging from April 3 to June 17 at 1:51 PM.
The second is the destination E drive, showing modified dates all near 10 PM on June 16. I know what that date and time means. It is the FIRST time that Free File Sync was run on THAT physical drive. I bought a new 3 TB drive on June 16 and ran Free File Sync on it that night, creating those folders for the first time.
I just ran Free File Sync again in the last 5 minutes. The modified dates for the G destination drive did NOT change. They remain near 10 PM on June 16.
As far as I know, this is ordinary default behavior when doing a custom sync in FFS.
Folder “created” dates are as shown on the properties page as explained in my earlier post—source and destination drives are in complete agreement, with matching created dates from June 2011. I know what that date is: the date I first installed and loaded data on my then new Samsung 1 TB primary data drive.
I have no idea why you might get different behavior.
Last edited by ignatzatsonic; 19 Jun 2014 at 00:42.
Wow....thank you for the step-by-step explanation, ignatzatsonic. Here is the screen shot of FFS main window with tools tab (highlighted) on menu and within that is the "options" choice I had mentioned....and the dialog box is what opens up when it's chosen.
I don't know if it matters either but in case it does, the properties page/security tab shown in the 3rd attachment of my post #42 is of the destination D: (internal SSD data partition). For my source drive G: (external HDD), both the admin user account has ownership and the standard user account has full control, in addition to the above mentioned permissions.
Well, this is the first time I've used FFS and on these drives (external HDD, source G: and internal SSD, destination D:, which again is a newly formatted partition). So do I understand correctly that in creating the new folders for the first time on destination drive, FFS cannot transfer the source subfolders' modified dates to those folders?
Using FFS for the first time, the custom option seemed easiest way to me for creating a simple configuration setting for copying my data from the HDD to the SSD. Do you think any of the other variants would give the result I need? This is more like migrating data that I am working on (thus the need to keep the subfolders' modified time/dates) to a new drive instead of a backup.
Last edited by dpwoodpecker; 18 Jun 2014 at 22:16. Reason: omitted key word in my question
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