File DatesChange On Copying to DVD

[Musawwir Spiegel]

Last March, a message was posted asking the following question:

"When I write to cd, all my files dates get changed to current,
causing me to lose the information on when the files was last
updated/changed. Is there a setting I can change to stop this from
happening?" [Subject: file dates - Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 15:01:02
-0800]

Somebody posted a response saying:

"No. The operative word is "write." "Copying" files retains the dates,
but "writing" assumes a new instance of the file. XP's CD-creation
software "writes," not copies. You can, however, ZIP all your files
into one archive, then "write" the ZIP file. The files will retain
their dates inside the ZIP archive."

The original poster then replied:

"Thanks for the response. I'm a little confused, though, as I'm quite
sure my computer at home does this. Both the office and home are Sony
VAIO and I "write" files to cd the same way. It's just that the
office computer changes the dates and the home one (I'm sure) doesn't.
So I assumed it was a setting somewhere but then I couldn't find such
a setting."

The responder never responded to this.

I am confronted with the same problem. I recently bought a new
computer running on XP Home. I have installed on the machine Roxio
Easy CD and DVD Creator, version 6, which I had used for a long time
on my other machine, and had thusfar used on the new machine without a
problem.

I wanted to archive the most significant contents of my old machine,
so I copied them, via network cable, to specific directories on my new
machine - OldCDrive, OldDDrive,.and OldEDrive. I then copied the
contents of those directories to DVDs (DVD+R), using Windows Explorer.

I was dismayed to find that not only did the directories on the
target DVD have the current date (something that always happens), but
all of the copied files also had the current date rather than the
dates of their original creation. I have never had that experience in
archiving files to CD or DVD before.

I did a number of such archives the other day to DVD+R disks and had
that same result. However, when I copied the same hard disk
directories to a DVD+RW disk, the files retained their original file
dates.

Preservation of the correct file dates is very important to me for the
sake of future references to the archives. Can anybody tell me what
is going on and how I can correct the problem?

Musawwir Spiegel
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Jimbo]

I'm not sure if this will help or not because I got a headache reading it
but it does deal with data and time changes:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299648

Last March, a message was posted asking the following question:

"When I write to cd, all my files dates get changed to current,
causing me to lose the information on when the files was last
updated/changed. Is there a setting I can change to stop this from
happening?" [Subject: file dates - Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 15:01:02
-0800]

Somebody posted a response saying:

"No. The operative word is "write." "Copying" files retains the dates,
but "writing" assumes a new instance of the file. XP's CD-creation
software "writes," not copies. You can, however, ZIP all your files
into one archive, then "write" the ZIP file. The files will retain
their dates inside the ZIP archive."

The original poster then replied:

"Thanks for the response. I'm a little confused, though, as I'm quite
sure my computer at home does this. Both the office and home are Sony
VAIO and I "write" files to cd the same way. It's just that the
office computer changes the dates and the home one (I'm sure) doesn't.
So I assumed it was a setting somewhere but then I couldn't find such
a setting."

The responder never responded to this.

I am confronted with the same problem. I recently bought a new
computer running on XP Home. I have installed on the machine Roxio
Easy CD and DVD Creator, version 6, which I had used for a long time
on my other machine, and had thusfar used on the new machine without a
problem.

I wanted to archive the most significant contents of my old machine,
so I copied them, via network cable, to specific directories on my new
machine - OldCDrive, OldDDrive,.and OldEDrive. I then copied the
contents of those directories to DVDs (DVD+R), using Windows Explorer.

I was dismayed to find that not only did the directories on the
target DVD have the current date (something that always happens), but
all of the copied files also had the current date rather than the
dates of their original creation. I have never had that experience in
archiving files to CD or DVD before.

I did a number of such archives the other day to DVD+R disks and had
that same result. However, when I copied the same hard disk
directories to a DVD+RW disk, the files retained their original file
dates.

Preservation of the correct file dates is very important to me for the
sake of future references to the archives. Can anybody tell me what
is going on and how I can correct the problem?

Musawwir Spiegel
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Musawwir Spiegel]

Thanks for the try, but I didn't see anything in the article that
helped me.

The hard disk in my new machine to which I had copied the files from
my old machine via network and from which I copied the files to the
DVD was formatted with FAT32. (Of course the hard disk that came
with the new XP machine was NTFS.)

That situation was not covered in the article. Furthermore, it would
not account for the difference in behavior between copying the
directories to a DVD+R as compared with copying them to a DVD+R disk.

Musawwir Spiegel
(e-mail address removed)

 

[frodo]

look around in the roxio options, I think that you can specify how the
dates are "preserved" somewhere in there. I know I can w/ Nero.

if you put the files into a zip and then write the zip to the optical disk
the dates can be preserved.

if you use a backup program to make a backup file and then burn that to
the disk it should also preserve the dates.