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re: Folder and File Dates Friday, October 12, 2007 at 9:19 am Posted by Jacob6601 (1671 messages posted) Create a temp folder -- on the same drive. Move all your files/folders into that one and then move/copy the folder. Only the parent folder (temp) should have a new date. There is a way to copy from the command prompt and preserve the dates -- not sure if it is supported in xp. Use the two commands below for help on copying from a DOS window: COPY /? XCOPY /? [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Folder and File Dates Friday, October 12, 2007 at 11:03 am Posted by Ricer46 (20235 messages posted) The folders are new, they were created today, the files are not. Why even worry about it? On Friday, October 12, 2007 at 8:53 am, MattWD wrote: >I just moved some of my folders and files over to a 2nd hard drive to free up some >space. After the move I noticed that the folders now have today's date. However, >all of the files that moved, including the ones inside of the folders that now have >today's date, have retained their original dates. Is there any way to move folders >and have them also retain their original dates? Seems like it might be function by >design but I figured that there might be a way. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Folder and File Dates Friday, October 12, 2007 at 12:54 pm Posted by MattWD (118 messages posted) I sort one of the directories by file date to help track changes to the files so it's not a problem, more of curiosity than 'worry.' That's when I saw that the files were okay but the folders were from today. I tried the suggestion of making a temp folder and moving the folders into it and found that moving folders on the SAME drive preserves the folder date but moving to another drive does not so Ricer looks to be correct, it's new to the new drive. There's always something new to learn. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: Folder and File Dates Friday, October 12, 2007 at 9:04 pm Posted by Rich Kurtz (11648 messages posted) It's a bug that goes back to DOS days (in my opinion anyway). No way that I know of to copy a directory and maintain the source directory timestamp. What you can do is write a batch file to change all the timestamps of the copied directories to match the originals. Download a port of the UNIX touch program and use it to change the timestamps. C:\>touch --help Usage: touch [OPTION]... FILE... Update the access and modification times of each FILE to the current time. -a change only the access time -c do not create any files -d, --date=STRING parse STRING and use it instead of current time -f (ignored) -m change only the modification time -r, --reference=FILE use this file's times instead of current time -t STAMP use MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss] instead of current time --time=WORD access -a, atime -a, mtime -m, modify -m, use -a --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit STAMP may be used without -t if none of -drt, nor --, are used. You can get it here: unxtools.zip [Reply or follow-up to this message] Tip: Use one of the [Reply or follow-up to this message] links above to add a message to this thread Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows XP Discussion Forum