Windows XP built-in CD burning destroys timestamps
Friday, December 15, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Posted by Maverick
(1 messages posted)
I report an annoyance about the technique described in How
do I use the built-in CD burning in Windows XP? and a workaround for it:
Using the technique described in the article to create a data CD causes the burned
files and folders to be TIMESTAMPED AS "NOW"; that is, valuable timestamp information
(creation dates, last-modified dates) attached to the original data is lost on the
CD image. This can be disastrous when archiving stages of development to CD with
the intent of deleting the original from the hard disk to free up space. To
preserve the original last-modified timestamps in the CD image, do not drag-n-drop
to the CD drive in explorer, but instead COPY the data directly to the CD image cache,
which by default is at "\Documents and Settings\[your_user_name]\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\CD Burning". (The actual location is found in the registry at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders\CD
Burning", if different from the default.) Then you can proceed with the Wizard. If
you want to retain the original data, then BE SURE to COPY the data (e.g. with drag-n-drop),
not MOVE them (simple drag-n-drop), as the Wizard will delete the contents of the
CD Burning folder when you are done. Copying preserves the last-modified timestamps
of files but not of folders, and does not preserve any creation timestamps. To preserve
creation and folder timestamps, you can use WinRAR to create an archive, then extract
the archive directly to the CD Burning folder, but for this technique you will need
free disk space of almost twice the space occupied by the original data (the temporary
contents of CD Burning, plus the RAR archive).
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