Windows: FileCreateDate does nothing?

[mgutt]

I tried to add some Exif data to my images. After testing a little bit around I understood that exiftool creates tmp files and renames them afterwards causing new file creating dates. Then I found out that it is possible to overwrite FileCreateDate in Windows. So I tried it as follows:

Code Select Expand

exiftool "-FileCreateDate<FileModifyDate" "c:\test"

Output:

Code Select Expand

    1 directories scanned
   72 image files updated

But after checking the files, all of the FileCreateDate's are still unchanged?! (they aren't updated, too).

I tried it with "run as administrator", too.

Is it because I'm using Windows 10 or did I understand the command wrong?

[Phil Harvey]

I just tried this on my Windows 10 system here and it worked as expected.  After you ran the ExifTool command, what is the output of this command for one of the files?:

exiftool -filecreatedate -filemodifydate FILE

Also, what version of ExifTool are you using?

- Phil

[mgutt]

I found the problem. After testing around I changed between different directory locations and finally I did not realize that its only a problem for smb network locations.

So this one works:

Code Select Expand

exiftool "-FileCreateDate<FileModifyDate" "c:\test"

But this one not:

Code Select Expand

exiftool "-FileCreateDate<FileModifyDate" "\\DISKSTATION\photo\test"

After trying the same with this tool it didn't work, too. So I think its a general restriction of SMB?!
http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/SKTimeStamp.html

Maybe you should output an error if FileCreateDate is used and the target is a network location?

That is sad. Now I need to move all files to my local windows pc, update exif and move them back again to the network location.

[Phil Harvey]

I've seen some other odd problems with Windows network drives associated with permissions problems (ie. here).  Although I can't understand why ExifTool doesn't report an error if it can't change the date due to a permission problem.  On a Mac, I get this (here I use FileModifyDate because FileCreateDate isn't writable on a Mac):

Code Select Expand

> exiftool a.jpg -filemodifydate=now
Warning: Error opening file for update - a.jpg
    0 image files updated
    1 files weren't updated due to errors

- Phil

[mgutt]

I don't know why, too. The SKTimeStamp-Tool has the same problem. It looks like it saves the date without showing an error, but after re-opening the file properties its reset to the old value. Definitely some of these strange windows things ^^