directory dates are not kept when overwriting dirs

[mp1]

[TC 7.02a]: When I overwrite a directory (with all it's files) with a dir of the same name but different creation date/time, these attributes are not kept (I have the option "Copy date/time of directories" enabled).

[petermad]

Confirmed

[StatusQuo]

Where does TC promise to copy the creation date?

Copy date/time of directories
Allows to copy the 'last modified' timestamp of a directory. Warning: On Windows 2000/XP the time stamp of a directory may change when files are changed in that directory!

Copying the creation date was requested before, but I only found a german thread including the author's comment.
Translated:

No file manager I know copies the Created and Last modified-values! Why? These values have the following meaning:
- Created: At this date the file was newly created. For copied files this is the time when the copy was created.
[...]

[petermad]

You might be right concerning creationdate, but TC doesn't update the writedate either (and I think that is what mp1 meant in his/her report):

If you have selected "Copy date/time of directories" and copy a directory to a new place for the first time, then the (write)date of the directory on the source side is applied to the new directory on the target side - as expected.

If you later on copy a directory with the same name but a different (write)date to the same target as before, the date of the target directory is kept in stead of being changed to that of the source directory - that's not what I would expect.


If I copy a FILE over another file I'd surely expect the new target file to get the date of the source file - so why the difference for directories?

[StatusQuo]

TC doesn't update the writedate either

Yes, but I'm not shure what's wrong with this, because:

so why the difference for directories?

Overwriting a file replaces all of its old contents with new content, this is different with dirs.
Copying a dir over another existing dir does not really "overwrite" the dir, but only adds/copies contents into it -
like adding files to an archive instead of replacing the whole archive.

On NTFS volumes: If the target directory already exists, its modified date gets constantly adjusted to the date its contents are changed -
I'd consider adopting an older date (until the next content change) while copying to be rather irritating.

On FAT volumes (I think) the modified date of dirs normally equals the creation date (unless changed manually or by a tool) and is not automatically changed by the FS,
so here it may be seen in a different light.

[mp1]

If you later on copy a directory with the same name but a different (write)date to the same target as before, the date of the target directory is kept in stead of being changed to that of the source directory - that's not what I would expect.

That's exactly my problem. I want to be able to keep the modification date of the source because that's the one beeing used for compares/syncs.

And btw. Midnight Commander implements this behaviour under linux if you select "keep attributes" for a copy operation.

[StatusQuo]

So maybe we need an additional option

"Overwrite date/time of directories on copying"

?

[petermad]

so here it may be seen in a different light.

That's one of the reasons why I stick to FAT on most of my partitions.

So maybe we need an additional option

I don't think so - I just think the current option "Copy date/time of directories" should work as requested here.

For FAT-partions it makes sense, and for NTFS-partitions it doesn't matter since the date is going to be changed anyway by the OS the next time a change happens inside the dir - a very annoying behaviour IMHO!

[ghisler(Author)]

It's indeed a problem (or Microsoft would call it feature) of the NTFS file system. If anyone knows how to stop that, please let us know!

[stormy1777]

This is a very HUGE limitation of Total commander... and really it's very easy to fix. Any program can modify the date of ANY file.. Yes, it's true that a new file is created, but when you finish copying the last file in that directory you reset the directory's date, very simple.. there's an API in windows to do that.. If you don't believe, just try xxcopy:

http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm#toc

it's free, then issue:

xxcopy c: d: /s /tca

and you are done, all the directories will be copied with correct timestamp as the original...

hope that TC can fix this... despite the folder location of this message.

Thanks.