Preserving 'creation' time and date stamps

[CarlosAE]

Hi,

I am having issues in preserving the original 'creation' date and time of the files that are synching onto Laptop B, originally synched onto my Dropbox account from Laptop A.

The files are originally from Laptop A, but when I check the stamps of the files synched in the Dropbox folder of Laptop B, the time-stamp 'creation date' is not kept (i.e. it takes whatever time the sync was performed). How can I preserve this time-stamp?

I am using the Dropbox desktop app, and have tried unchecking the folders from the Selective Sync, Updating, and then checking them back without success (creation time-dates are overwritten).

I greatly appreciate your help. This will help me decide if I switch from Google Drive to Dropbox, as it is paramount for me to preserve time stamps of all my files. Google Drive doesn't preserve date stamps unfortunately, and I want to know if Dropbox does.

Thanks,

Carlos

[Rich]

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@CarlosAE wrote:

... it is paramount for me to preserve time stamps of all my files.

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I think you'll find that all cloud storage/sync services work the same way. The creation date isn't preserved from Computer A because the creation date for that COPY of the file is when it was downloaded to (i.e. created on) Computer B. It's an accurate date and time for when that file was created.

It's the same when you download a file in your web browser. You may be downloading a file created days, week, months ago, but if you look at the date of the file you'll see it's when the file was downloaded.

[CarlosAE]

Thanks for the reply, sorry for my one though!

Then, wouldn't it be better if there is a stamp that says 'download time' and another 'creation time'. Because the file was genuinely not created the day it was downloaded/uploaded to the cloud. This is impractical, and Rich, unfortunately what you say is true - so far I haven't found any cloud service that provides this 'time-stamp' preservation of files synched to their service. Google Drive, Dropbox, SugarSync, OneDrive... why not Dropbox be a pioneer on this! I've raised this issue with GD - they told me they will look at and see what can be done in the next release they do...

I'm hoping for the future to be around the corner, when developers notice and fix this sometimes unnoticeable issue, but that for some of us makes a great difference (in terms of data management apsects of things, etc...) 

[Jay]

Hi @CarlosAE, we appreciate any feedback on how to improve the service.

You can suggest this change which will allow others to vote on, so that the dev team can consider this for future improvements!

[HKilada]

I had the same issue of preserving the right creation date which is crucial for many. It's an OS issue and I don't think that any app will override the OS policy for time stamping. One thing to add which might help, I noticed that the folders get Creation and Modified dates of the download date, but the files inside get the original date modified. It is still not the original creation date but it can give a better sense of the last modification date of the files.

Kimo

[JW06_1949]

The answer to this is simple. Zip the files with "preserve folder info" checked when creating new winzip file before upload then upload  the zipped file to any cloud based storage system. The zip file with show current date but the files in the the zipped file will have original timestamp.

[jkeith]

Zipping files and folders does preserve timestamps for files but not for folders. I could not find "preserve folder info" as an option for the native zip function in Windows 10. In fact, there are no options when zipping files and folders.

I still haven't found a solution that preserves both file and folder timestamps. It's incredible to me that this problem still exists and none of the cloud-based backup/sync services are doing anything about it.

[JW06_1949]

I am sure it is there. There is a check box