Robocopy – Change Modified Date

robocopy

I'm copying a file over to another directory and was wondering if Robocopy can change the modified date to the date it copied the file over in the new directory. I haven't been successful playing with the switches.

Set Source="C:\Dir\
Set Dest="C:\Dir\TMP

robocopy /V /IS "%Source%" "%Dest%" /NOCOPY

I want test.txt (modified 01/23/12) to copy over to the TMP directory with a new date modified of time of copy.

Best Answer

Nope. You can do this with a powershell script though. Just Google powershell change last modified date. So you can use Robocopy to copy the files and then run the powershell script to modify the date. Or you could use powershell to copy the files and modify the date.

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Windows – Robocopy – how to discard timestamps

I don't think Robocopy will work for this. A core part of how Robocopy works is by comparing timestamps and file sizes in the source and destination folders to determine which files need to be copied. So, you can't use Robocopy to update timestamps in the destination to be 'newer' than the timestamps on the source.

Now, I have seen this behavior when pushing files with UNIX permissions to NTFS (or vice versa) but it's not so much an intended behavior as the inability of Robocopy to translate ACLs.

I'm not exactly clear on what you're trying to do, but there's probably quite a few workarounds to get something that works for you. Examples:

Have the robocopy script copy files into a directory named based off the date.
Capture the time/date to a log file whenever the script runs successfully.

Using robocopy to correct date and time

/copy:t should copy just the timestamps. Keep in mind, however, that if they are very small files that copying just the timestamps may take longer than copying the entire file.

    robocopy c:\src c:\dest /copy:T

robocopy /help says

/COPY:copyflag[s] :: what to COPY for files (default is /COPY:DAT).
                 (copyflags : D=Data, A=Attributes, T=Timestamps).
                 (S=Security=NTFS ACLs, O=Owner info, U=aUditing info).

Best Answer

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Using robocopy to correct date and time

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