Upgrading Drives from 10TB to 18/20TB Best way to Preserve File Dates? Teracopy, Clone Drive or another?

[dpoverlord]

Moving some small drives over to a larger drive.

I want to preserve the file creation / Modified dates and saw Teracopy does that. Is that a better option than done a Clone? Moving a 10TB to a 20TB and don't want to find I did it incorrectly. Has been awhile and last thing I want is for those old photos to show todays date .

Love any input to save time. Really appreciate the help

 

[Luke M]

Just about any copy method will preserve the dates.

 

[toast0]

How full is your 10TB drive? As you get to pretty full, clone is faster than a file by file copy because it's 100% sequential read and write and no seeking. Especially if it's lots of small files. If it's all linux isos or other large files, and you've only got 2TB, then file based is the way to go.

 

[Okatis]

Just about any copy method will preserve the dates.

Windows File Explorer copy for example only preserves date modified. For the remaining timestamps things like Robocopy (CLI) can be used (with the /COPY:DATS parameter, optionally also /DCOPY:DAT to preserve directory timestamps as well).

On Linux though no filesysystem I've seen seems to give first-class treatment to timestamps beside date modified, sadly, since their date creation attribute (if it's even supported, eg: EXT4) is meant to be a read-only value and non-transferrable.

 

[Luke M]

How full is your 10TB drive? As you get to pretty full, clone is faster than a file by file copy because it's 100% sequential read and write and no seeking. Especially if it's lots of small files. If it's all linux isos or other large files, and you've only got 2TB, then file based is the way to go.

A file copy will defragment though!

 

[Luke M]

Windows File Explorer copy for example only preserves date modified. For the remaining timestamps things like Robocopy (CLI) can be used (with the /COPY:DATS parameter, optionally also /DCOPY:DAT to preserve directory timestamps as well).

On Linux though no filesysystem I've seen seems to give first-class treatment to timestamps beside date modified, sadly, since their date creation attribute (if it's even supported, eg: EXT4) is meant to be a read-only value and non-transferrable.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I've never paid attention to anything besides last modified.

 

[dpoverlord]

I went ahead and used Teracopy and then checked the files and there were a lot of folders that did not copy over creation / Modified dates.

I used Beyond Compare to further analyze but could not figure out how to Use Beyond Compare to edit the folder dates. The file dates transferred perfectly.

I then went ahead and used Teracopy again with the "Skip ALL" option and it edited all the folders.

I wanted to clone, but I wanted to use the system during the process and also add a few more files. 24 hrs in and it just finished verifying 10TB.

It is odd though that Teracopy could not get get it all done. Also was odd that Beyond compare (great software) could not change the folder dates so I would not have to start over.

Anyone else ever deal with these issues? I really wanted the GUI just so I could assure visually it read correctly.

 

[Zepher]

Directory Opus can do what you wanted but it's a paid program. I used to use it all the time back in my Amiga days as it was the best file management tool at the time.
https://resource.dopus.com/t/can-do-preserve-modify-and-create-dates-of-folders-when-copy/7175

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/order_intro.html

 

[dpoverlord]

Directory Opus can do what you wanted but it's a paid program. I used to use it all the time back in my Amiga days as it was the best file management tool at the time.
https://resource.dopus.com/t/can-do-preserve-modify-and-create-dates-of-folders-when-copy/7175

View attachment 541350
View attachment 541349

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/order_intro.html

Thx let me check that out!

 

[Edgar]

This is command line run as admin:
robocopy C:\...source F:\...dest /E /copyall /copy:dat /xo /mt:64 /r:3 /w:3 /log+:c:\temp\RClog.log

Change the source and dest. I believe it should retain all info. Try it out with a few small files first.

 

[Edgar]

Best thing about the command is if it missed something. Just run it again and it will only copy over what doesn’t exist in destination folder and leave everything else intact.

I work for an MSP and we use this command on all file share migrations

 

[dpoverlord]

Thank you so much!