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Windows Explorer - Date created / modified / Accessed - it's driving me spare!!

Anonymous
2022-11-15T10:11:49+00:00

Hello community members (and hopefully a Microsoft employee somewhere),

I am trying to manage 600 Gb of photo files to help my daughter who is a travel writer. She has the files organised into folder (several levels deep with sub folders) on her OneDrive which is synced between her laptop (1Tb SSD) and the cloud.

We have been trying to sort the folders into a date modified order to create a "backup copy" on to an external portable HDD and to free up space on her laptop HDD into which she can then add more folders for a long upcoming trip and help to make the backing up task easier. She has many folders that have not been changed for several years and so once backep up these would not need to be backed up again on the external drive.

We cannot understand the "logic" of the dates in Windows Explorer - it seems that it should be simple (Date created / modified / accessed) but there does not appear to be any consistency in when the Date Modified of a folder (let's call it Folder name "A") is changed in terms of:

  • When a New file or folder is added to folder A
  • When an existing folder or file in folder A is modified
  • When a file or folder down in the folder structure (maybe 3 or 4 levels down from folder A) is modified by change or addition.

I have searched for ages to find what logical rules are applied so that we can use these dates to identify recently changed folders and filles to set up a meaningful task of "Let's back up the files and folders that have changed since the last backup". It seems totally random / illogical.

I do NOT want the ability to change folder or file dates myself within the OS - I was hoping to rely on Windows 10 or 11 to change them when changes occur to simply sort the contents of the OneDrive top folder into Date Modified order and to simply then back up these changed folders and their content.

Can ANYONE (hopefully Microsoft) explain the rules in layman's terms so a simple soul like me can understand how it works (or why it doesn't)?

Thanks in advance, Frank

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-11-15T16:48:34+00:00

    In case they didn't show up, these are the images - I missed the "Insert Image" icon on the toolbar above. :

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-11-15T16:43:28+00:00

    Hello, thanks for the reply. I think I was too clever expaining in such detail what we were trying to do - but the basic question / problem does exist (for me at any rate) in my normal, NOT OneDrive folders.

    I will try to illustrate with some images if I am allowed to post them. These are taken from a folder on one of my internal (to my deskto) drives and are NOT One Drive folders. In each one, the 3 dates are (from the left) Date created / Date Modified / Date accessed:

    1 - a folder within a higher level folder:

    2 - A folder within the Music speech items books:

    3 - An individual file (just added to the folder above)

    Look at the middle set of dates in each case (supposedly the Last Modified date). Why is this date in the folder in photo 1 3/11/22 when the dates below (for an individual file inside the folder in photo 2) 15/11/22?

    I would have thought that the Music Speech items books folder had also been modified on 15/11/22 because items within it have also been modified.

    A clear explanation would be handy from someone. if there are a set of simple rules.

    Thanks, Frank

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-11-15T12:57:00+00:00

    If you are using OneDrive, you cannot create a backup

    The OneDrive folder in file explorer is a cached copy of the OneDrive cloud server

    To 'free up space on the local PC' see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/save-disk-space-with-onedrive-files-on-demand-for-windows-0e6860d3-d9f3-4971-b321-7092438fb38e

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