I want to keep the created date of my folder when I upload it via rcloud to Google Drive. Since I just want to use GDrive as a backup for my local external storages, I want the folders to have the created time of their actual creation, not the upload. The "modified time" can vary of course, but is there a way to keep the created time of folders?
I do have different hard drives and want to back them up to the cloud. Basically I just want to mirror my drives and keeping every metadata as is, like it would be when copying folders from Mac to hard drive. Google Drive messes up the metadata some times as well – like uses "created time" as the updated time and "modified date" as the original creation date, but that does seem to be their fault. I noticed that encryption keeps all the original metadata of the files, so yay for that! I just wonder if that works with folders as well. Or are folders always newly created and not copied from the local drive?
When I upload a folder with the Mac app or via the browser, the creation time of the folder is saved, so GDrive must have this option. At least it does it sometimes, I have yet to understand what triggers GDrive to chance the creation date. I uploaded a few folders via the Finder and half of them got the creation date of the uploaded date and the other half kept their local creation date.
I have tried the rclone browser and the webUI to upload, not the command line itself, since I know very little about it. Basically I just use all of your tutorials step by step (thank you so much for your documentations and explanations!), but when I can't find the one I need, I am stuck. So I appreciate you help!
Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.
rclone v1.58.0
os/version: darwin 12.3 (64 bit)
os/kernel: 21.4.0 (x86_64)
os/type: darwin
os/arch: amd64
go/version: go1.17.8
go/linking: dynamic
go/tags: cmount
Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)
Rclone doesn't keep any info on folders so that's not something you can retain.
With no command/rclone.conf/log details, it's hard to figure out your questions since there isn't any data to look at. I hate to guess on things without seeing what's going on.
You can probably do something similar in the rclone browser.
I guess the reason is that many backends do not support setting the "creation time"; even the "modification time" is sometimes impossible/difficult/costly.
You would need a specialised backup tool to store all metadata; rclone's strength lies in easy and fast copy of basic filedata to a vast amount of cloud storages.
PS: Google Drive does in fact allow you to store "creation date" as "modified date", but I don't think it fulfills your need and please read this carefully before even trying: https://rclone.org/drive/#drive-use-created-date
Thank you so much! Sometimes things just can't be done, even if I wanted it. Better to have asked than to have missed the solution
So I'll just have to deal with it. I didn't even think dates would be modified at all, because I am used to hard drives that just copy everything as is and don't change a thing. Cloud storage suddenly seems something else entirely
