Created time stamp

[Aaron]

Great job Scooter & BC Team. Would it COPY/ CLONE the "Created, Modified & Accessed" dates? All three or two ( C & M)?

Seriously! ? When/ which build did this get added? Can anyone confirm using this?

It's in the base 4.0 build, but I would recommend using the latest minor build of BC4.x. The option is in the Folder Compare Session menu -> Session Settings, Handling tab to "Copy creation dates". Please note that this is only for files, not folders, and works during the Copy command. This option specifically controls Creation date, not Last Modified or Accessed. Last Modified is always attempted to be preserved, but this is under the control of the destination device. Last Accessed is not preserved.

[ASRtech]

I already moved a users home drive using Beyond Compare BC4 but didn't have the "copy creation dates" checked when I did it. Is there a way to transfer the creation dates after? Any suggestions?

[Aaron]

Unfortunately, setting the Creation Date independently is not an option we currently support. You could re-copy the files with the Creation Date option enabled in the Session Settings, Handling tab. We have a Touch command for setting the Last Modified date, but it does not support editing the Creation date.

[ASRtech]

Unfortunately, setting the Creation Date independently is not an option we currently support. You could re-copy the files with the Creation Date option enabled in the Session Settings, Handling tab. We have a Touch command for setting the Last Modified date, but it does not support editing the Creation date.

Thanks for the reply and the FYI on the Touch command!

[crashnburn]

I already moved a users home drive using Beyond Compare BC4 but didn't have the "copy creation dates" checked when I did it. Is there a way to transfer the creation dates after? Any suggestions?

Microsoft RichCopy - It does both. I typically use a combination of TeraCopy 2.12 followed by a few iterations of RichCopy and I get all the C & M dates for Files & Folders. There is a "create folders" & "do not copy files" option in RC that only recreates folders with same C & M dates.

So, I am excited to see how well BC 4.x performs on this.

[crashnburn]

Whilst trialling BC3 for our professional IT use, we got quite frustrated at its lack of support for Created timestamps, so decided to roll our own extensions:

For us, transferring Created timestamps is essential when migrating between customers systems where it is necessary to keep such information intact. ie you don't want all the customers files to pickup the created time you did the migration but in fact keep the original times the files were created.



TransferTimestamps is a simple API shell I wrote which copies all three timestamps between directories. Whilst we were at it, we added an option called 'Unbuffered copy' which does a streaming copy instead of using the Windows API. This is very useful when transferring multi GB files off servers where you don't want the server File cache to be affected which would impact front end performance..

Whilst this improves the usability of BC for our purposes, it worked out to be quite a pain to have to do two step operations and remind our staff to use the correct external copy option.... Having these built in would be sublime!

For this reason, we chose a competing product over BC (Syncovery).

I still prefer the BC interface however and would adopt it as our file management tool of choice in a heartbeat if this one niggling feature were ever to be addressed.

I have been checking the changelog repeatedly for this with great expectation since the days of BC2 ... over four years now....!

Sorry for the long post, though I really think BC would be the best file management tool on Windows if this were fixed.

I just noticed this. Could you share these EXTENSIONS/ SCRIPTS with us please? Maybe put it up on GitHub and we could all benefit from using this. Thanks.

[crashnburn]

It's in the base 4.0 build, but I would recommend using the latest minor build of BC4.x. The option is in the Folder Compare Session menu -> Session Settings, Handling tab to "Copy creation dates".

Please note that this is only for files, not folders, and works during the Copy command.

This option specifically controls Creation date, not Last Modified or Accessed. Last Modified is always attempted to be preserved, but this is under the control of the destination device. Last Accessed is not preserved.

Aaron - Fast Copy does a bunch of things that people are asking for; and is FREE and OPEN Source.
Especially the FOLDER TREE - Creation etc dates
https://fastcopy.jp/en/

Maybe you could PULL IN / Learn/ Borrow code from them? I'm sure they would not mind.

[Aaron]

Hello,

Specific examples are always appreciated of how other software handles these scenarios from a user perspective and usability support. However, pulling in code requires researching and following license agreements, and some open source projects have clauses where they can only be used in specific scenarios or require other parts of your own program to be or become open source, which BC4 cannot do. From a technical perspective, code must also be vetted for security, and updated to handle all of the various sources BC4 can handle (Profiles, etc) and platforms, which is what makes this a larger project for us to implement.