file date sync issue

[fredscal]

Hello.

I'm having a bit of a trouble with the way I do my backups.

The way I do my backups is this: I have a backup USB drive, which is a clone of my primary USB drive (not that the 2 HDs are the same model, but their file content is identical). Every week or so, I copy everything from one HD to the other with Total Commander, selecting "Overwrite all older" in the overwrite confirmation dialog. That way, only files I have created or modified since the last backup are copied.

Except yesterday, TC started copying EVERYTHING, the whole content of my HD ! I stopped it and used the Synchronize Dir tool to look at the problem closer. So, it appears that all my files' dates are out of sync by exactly one hour !

See this screen capture: http://www.fredscalliet.com/host/img/TIMEBUG.PNG

So my two questions are:
- how could this have happened ?
- how can I correct this ?

(Comparing files 'by content' while 'ignoring dates' in the Sync tool is not a solution because it takes much too long and it would also tag possible corrupt files for copying over sane ones. What I would like would be to set all the dates back into sync, if possible.)

Every insight welcome, thanks.

[Hacker]

fredscal,
Perhaps you upgraded TC? Since v8.0 TC uses a new algorithm to show the timestamps for files whose modified timestamp lies within a DST timeframe when files are shown during non-DST timeframes, ie a file modified in July will show a different timestamp in July and in December. This was done to be consistent with Explorer.

Code: Select all

[Configuration]
NewTimeZoneMethod=
1: Windows 7-style timezone method (default on Windows 7)
0: Old method (default on older Windows)

Perhaps there was a timezone or DST change?
Perhaps there was a filesystem change (FAT / NTFS)? FAT stores times as they are and does not touch them, NTFS stores times in UTC so they are shown differently depending on DST.

You could also try this:

Code: Select all

[Configuration]
1hourdif=0 1: Ignore time difference of exactly one hour when comparing files. This is useful when comparing between an NTFS and FAT volume (daylight saving time!).

HTH
Roman

[petermad]

[Configuration]
1hourdif=0 1:

This can also be set from the Configuration dialog: "Configuration" -> "Options..." -> "Operation" -> "NTFS daylight saving correction" -> "Ignore 1 hour time delay".

[fredscal]

Thank you both.

The problem affected files with dates all around the year, so I knew it was not a daylight saving problem.

But I am indeed running TC8.01 under Windows8. I have now added the NewTimeZoneMethod=0 key to my wincmd.ini (that key was not there before, so I suppose the default behaviour was the problem) and it did the trick !

What puzzles me is that I was running TC8/Win8 long before this problem occured... I think. Oh, well. Whatever. I seems to be fixed now.

So thanks, Hacker.

Now for the sake of babbling :

I've always strongly refused to even aknowledge Windows Explorer's existence. So consistency with it, I couldn't care less about ! ;-)

I am also relieved that this was only a reading issue, not affecting the actual content of my HDs (well, that is until when it started making me overwrite the wrong files of course... :-( ).