ScanTFS - Attributes

Attribute Dialog

Attribute(s)

The Attribute(s) dialog is displayed when attrib is selected for one or more items. The following attributes can be changed: Read-Only, Hidden, System, Archive, Date modified and Date created. Select one of the following options:

on turn this attribute ON, regardless of current setting,
- do NOT change the current setting of this attribute,
off turn this attribute OFF, regardless of current setting.

[-] Set date modified: select to update date modified - use the date / time picker to select a timestamp (default is current date/time)
[-] Set date created: select to update date created - use the date / time picker to select a timestamp (default is current date/time)
[-] Copy date Modified to Date Created - unconditionally change date created
[-] Copy date Created to Date Modified - unconditionally change date modified
[-] Check, if date modified is before date created then:
(•) Copy date modified to date created
(-) Copy date created to date modified

About the NTFS file date/time

In general the Date Created is the date on which a file was created on the Windows (NTFS) filesystem and the Date Modified is the date on which a file was last altered (modified). When Windows is used to Copy a file, the Date Modified is also copied, but the Date Created is set to the current date/time because Windows considers the copy of an existing file to be a new file. This explains why a Date Modified can have a date/time that lies before the Date Created. When Windows is used to Move a file, the original Date Modified and Date Created are preserved because the original file has only been moved to a different location and now new file was created.

Unfortunately, the above is not always true. When moving or copying files from a USB device (e.g. camera) to the Windows filesystems the Date Created and Date Modified may or may not be copied, left blank or set to the current date/time, depending on the device used. The same can be true when using file transfer software to copy/move files from one computer to another (e.g. FileZilla has a setting to indicate whether or not to copy the originating file date/time).