admin wrote: ↑05 Sep 2025 09:37
1) You say "When I move a folder..." and then show your Backup configuration. Backup is always copy, not move. So, what is it now?
2) The setting "Suffix increment to copy" only affects files, not folders. If folders collide they are merged. So when you say "renaming it with a suffix doesn't preserve the original date", who does the renaming?
The Backup Operations and Custom Copy Operations settings in my case are identical (I can upload screenshots if necessary). If you look at the corresponding screenshots, I have Custom Copy configured for both moving and copying. You can even configure the suffix format.
I've been using this option for a while, and the creation and modification dates of directories remained unchanged.
Here's an example of how I work.
I'm a teacher currently doing research. I have backups of my work files going back two decades, and I decided to copy them to a new unified external hard drive so I can access them more efficiently. Once on the new external hard drive, I have to organize those files, located within directories, which often have the same name. For example, doing a search, I find something like the following:
FOLDER1
(Created and modified in 2011)
FOLDER1
(Created and modified in 2016)
When I cut and paste those two folders with the same names into, for example, UNIFIEDFOLDER,
this happens:
FOLDER1
(Created and modified in 2011)
FOLDER1_001
(Created and modified in 2025)
Clarification: The _001 suffix is the one I configured in XYplorer; it can be set in different ways.
I performed this operation a few days ago and noticed that two old folders all had current dates. Luckily, I was able to resolve it, as I noticed it right away. XYplorer used to move folders while perfectly preserving their attributes; it's only with the current version that it stopped working (I also checked previous operations and there was no problem). Now, I must take the precaution of renaming each directory with a duplicate name in its original location, with the resulting extra time consumed, which is detrimental to productivity, so that when they are moved, they retain their dates. The thing is, I have a lot of material. If this happened to me with 10 directories with duplicate names, I would have to dig through the files within each folder to date them correctly (it's worth noting that Windows, in the case of files, is much more user-friendly and faithfully preserves the attributes).
In short, with the current version of XYplorer, a folder moved and renamed with a suffix is considered a new folder, not an old folder (in fact, natively, Windows only changes the date if I change the contents; if I rename it, the attributes remain unchanged).
There's a previous post, "Custom Copy changes the date created and date modified when it shouldn't," from May 23, which describes a very similar situation.
