Download DirDate 4.4.4 Free Trial

DirDate is a command line tool that can easily be automated to change files' last modification date, creation date or last access date. It can change dates using either a reference file (where you can 'lift' the date from an existing file), the current date/time or a series of YEAR, MONTH, DAY, HOUR, MIN, SEC and MSEC commands. It can process files in subfolders, handles read-only files and it has a preview mode so that you can see which files will be modified. You can set file date and times right down to the 0.1 microseconds (100 nanosecond increments), or even tweak existing times up and down.

Eg 1. Set all file creation dates to Christmas day:
dirdate -CREATION date=12/25/2000 time=12:00:00 *.*

Eg 2. Add 10 minutes to file modification dates:
dirdate -MODIFIED ADD=6000000000 *.*

Eg 3. Set folder dates to the date of the oldest file. This is very handy when you copy photos to a new computer.
dirdate -r -diroldest c:\My Documents

DirDate has a report mode which is used to save the dates from one folder and then apply
them to a new folder. This is extremely handy for saving file creation dates from an old
computer when you copy photos, documents etc across to a new computer, as the creation date
is NEVER preserved by file copying software.

Here's how:

1. Start a Command Prompt (e.g. Start Menu\Run..., command)
2. Use the command CD to change to the original folder (e.g. CD "c:\My Documents")
3. Run DirDate in report mode to backup all file creation dates:

"c:\Program Files\DataMystic\DirDate\dirdate.exe" -report -r -CREATION *.* > report.bat

Note: -r means 'recurse into subfolders'
-report means report mode
-creation means file creation dates

The output is saved to report.bat.
4. Copy report.bat to the destination folder after the files have been copied.
5. Run report.bat by double-clicking it or by typing 'report.bat'.

That's it! You can also use -ALL instead of -CREATION to save all date. Now, go ahead and free download DirDate.