Windows – Robocopy – how to discard timestamps

robocopywindows

I'm trying to copy some files to a folder where there are already older versions of those files with the robocopy tool. And in order to differentiate versions, I'd like to set the timestamp to "now" in the output folder when the file is copied over.

Basically it would be like copying and "touch"-ing the file.

However, as easy as it looks, it seems that there is no option to do that. I understood that when using the D (data) flag on /COPY, the T (timestamp) flag is automatically added, so the source timestamp is kept.

Is there something I missed in the options? Or is there any other alternative?

Thanks for any help.

Julien.

Best Answer

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.

Related Solutions

Why does RoboCopy create a hidden system folder

On my system (Vista), powershell shows the c:\ drive as having both hidden and system attributes set.

    PS C:\Users\michael.DOMAIN> Get-Item c:\


    Directory:


Mode           LastWriteTime       Length Name
----           -------------       ------ ----
d--hs     8/18/2009 12:19 PM        <DIR> C:\

After copying the files, you can use attrib to fix them. Check out attrib /? for details.

Windows – How to delete files older than 30 days with robocopy

I don't know how to do it with robocopy, but when I wanted to do the same as what you're doing, I put this line in my batch file:

forfiles -p %_BACKUPPATH% -m *.rar -d -3 -c "cmd /c del @path"

A dissection is:

forfiles - The program for filtering the files
-p %_BACKUPPATH% - -p indicates "path" (mine is %_BACKUPPATH% but you can replace this with a "real" path), otherwise it uses the current directory
-m *.rar - filter by filetype .rar, skip this parameter for *.*
-d -3 - Only affect files older than 3 days (-3)
-c "cmd /c del @path" - anything after the -c is what will be executed for each file it finds, in this case, del.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Why does RoboCopy create a hidden system folder

Windows – How to delete files older than 30 days with robocopy

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