Submission details
Finder & OS X: File modification & creation dates are discarded when transferring files to FAT32 volumes
When copying or saving files to FAT32 volumes (USB Flash Drives, digital camera memory cards, media boxes, digital photo frames, mobile phones, Windows formatted hard disks etc) OS X discards the file's original creation and modification dates. The file's creation date is left blank, and the modification date is changed to the time that the file was copied.
It is impossible now to tell when the files was created or modified, so working with multiple versions of a file becomes a nightmare, and digital photo frames that display files in order of the date they were taken now show files completely at random.
Force the Finder and OS to respect file creation and modification dates when it uses FAT32 volumes.
High
High
Not fixed
Discussion (2 comments)
FAT32 definitely supports creation and modification dates. Even my digital camera and DivX media box support dates, and correctly update both when necessary. Many years ago it was decided that the Mac wouldn't respect these dates, and nothing has been changed or updated since despite many requests.
FAT32 may be old and outdated but it's still used every day by almost every digital camera and every device that can use SD cards including the latest mobile phones.
Watchful wrote on December 17, 2008, 5:29pm
As I understand it, this has to do with technical limitations of the FAT file system. This is after all an old, and mostly outdated file system.