Copied file time stamps are wrong

logicalduck · 01-02-2008, 10:56 AM

When I copy a file from a Windows 98SE machine to a shared drive on my home network, the time stamp (modification date) of the copied file is exactly 1 hour later than the time stamp of the original file.

Any ideas how I can correct this?

I've tried playing with the time zone and daylight saving flag settings on the PC's clock, but the effect remains.

An XP machine on the same network can copy files to the same network drive without this problem.

**OldGrayGary** · 01-04-2008, 05:38 PM

Hi logicalduck

You mentioned the daylight-savings flag - that is the only known issue when copying files originally timestamped in a FAT32 environment to an NTFS environment, which timestamps files using UTC. As good a place to quote as any, the Wikipedia mentions:

Quote:

For historical reasons, the versions of Windows that do not support NTFS all keep time internally as local zone time, and therefore so do all file systems other than NTFS that are supported by current versions of Windows. However, Windows NT and its descendants keep internal timestamps as UTC and make the appropriate conversions for display purposes. Therefore, NTFS timestamps are in UTC. This means that when files are copied or moved between NTFS and non-NTFS partitions, the OS needs to convert timestamps on the fly. But if some files are moved when daylight saving time (DST) is in effect, and other files are moved when standard time is in effect, there can be some ambiguities in the conversions. As a result, especially shortly after one of the days on which local zone time changes, users may observe that some files have timestamps that are incorrect by one hour. Due to the differences in implementation of DST between the northern and southern hemispheres, this can result in a potential timestamp error of up to 4 hours in any given 12 months

In what file system is the network drive formatted? How is it attached to the network? When making the time-zone & daylight-savings changes that you mentioned, did both the FAT32 Win9x/Me systems and the NTFS Win2K/XP/Vista systems time-zone/daylight-savings match exactly?

Whatever the case, if you need to alter a lot of files in a hurry, there are third-party utilities that can put thing back aright. . . with a little elbow (or keyboard) grease (A quick look with your favorite search-engine will yield many examples).

Best of luck
. . . Gary

01-02-2008, 10:56 AM	#1 (permalink)
logicalduck Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 9 OS: Windows XP SP2	Copied file time stamps are wrong When I copy a file from a Windows 98SE machine to a shared drive on my home network, the time stamp (modification date) of the copied file is exactly 1 hour later than the time stamp of the original file. Any ideas how I can correct this? I've tried playing with the time zone and daylight saving flag settings on the PC's clock, but the effect remains. An XP machine on the same network can copy files to the same network drive without this problem.