How to keep or reset the File Created date when copying files.
I just discovered something interesting. I had a stack of photos copied from one computer to another, and the creation dates all became the date and time I copied them, which made a mess in Picasa.
However, the modification dates were correct – that is they were the date the original photo was taken. (My camera didn’t have EXIF then.)
If you Zip the photos, then Unzip them again (using Windows XP’s Built in Zip thing) it changes the creation date to be the same as the modified date, thereby resetting the date of the file!
In my case it doesn’t quite fix the Picasa problem in that it turns out I’ll have to sync the db folder on multiple PCs and to do this I first have to change the location of the photos to be the same on all computers. (Probably a P drive in TrueCrypt – advantage: Photos encrypted for privacy in case of theft, and stored in one file that can be easily backed up to DVD without fear of losing dates, etc.)