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I altered the modifying dates on my files. Will my files and updates be safe once I resume the app?

Hello friends. I have a lotof old pictures (some dating back to 1950s) on my computer which are synced with Dropbox. They are close to 1TB. I took the past week modifying the dates in the pictures (created date, modified date, EXIF dates) on my desktop to reflect when the pictures were taken.

I didnt really think about it but now I am afraid of running the dropbox application since I dont know which dates will be retained when dropbox syncs with the folders. Since the dates on the files in dropbox are more recent than the dates I put on the files now, I am concerned that dropbox will download those files and overwrite the ones on my desktop and I will lose the updated dates I put on the files.

Does anyone know what date dropbox uses to sync files? Does it use date modified, date accessed or something else. Any help will be appreciated.

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Megan

Hey @sohaibh, let's jump right into this!

Interesting case there! Let me ask some questions first, to make sure we're aligned.

Did you rename these files to reflect an older date, or did you actually modify the "date created" or "date modified" metadata? For instance, does the content now show a creation date like 3/3/1953?

Also just to confirm, these files are currently inside your Dropbox folder, right?

If I were you, I'd recommend taking a cautious approach. If possible, use an external drive to back up all the files you've altered just to be safe before taking any further actions. Once that's done, you can test a few files by placing them back in your Dropbox folder to observe how they behave.

I'm suggesting this route, because modified file dates isn't something we typically encounter or test on our end, so it's best to proceed carefully.

Thanks a bunch!

sohaibh

Hi Megan!

I used a tool called BulkFileChanger to modify the actual metadata on the files. I will create a backup of the files today. Would you know which date field is used by dropbox to determine which file is newer (eg. date modified or date accessed)? If I have that info, I can use BulkFileChanger to modify that date field to todays date so it will be the newest date.

Thanks!

casperrues1

The response suggests that changing the dates should not impact file integrity as long as Dropbox continues to sync the files properly. Dropbox tracks file versions, so updates should be safe.

Jay

Hi @sohaibh, in general, the Dropbox desktop application would only sync when the file is modified, so it would be using the modification date, and not the accessed date, since this would change constantly if you were to scroll through your images for instance.

However, bear in mind that the modification date itself is what Dropbox would sync and show on the site, so all your files would have today's date. Likewise, if you were to edit the metadata on a single file afterwards, the modification date would change again, and that would then sync to the site.

The simplest solution given your situation is that since modification dates can always change (and Dropbox doesn't track the file creation date itself), you could rename the images in numerical order, similar to how Dropbox does the automatic camera uploads.

For instance, this could be a renamed file in your imageset, 1956-02-25 13.48.02.jpg, and so on. With that, there is no doubt about the 'date' of the image. YYYY-MM-DD HH.MM.SS helps for ascending order in international format (and is compatible with all OSes since there are no : / or | symbols), and filenames will never change unless you do it manually.

With the bulk renaming program, you should be able to automatically rename all your images like this using the metadata and wildcards, so you can easily locate the correct date/time etc in the future.

Rich

Jay wrote:
Likewise, if you were to edit the metadata on a single file afterwards, the modification date would change again, and that would then sync to the site.

That's not been my experience. Dropbox doesn't look at the dates to compare files and determine which to sync. It looks at the indexed content of the files. Modifying the date and time attributes of a file, without changing the content, has never caused a file to sync and update the timestamp, in my experience.

I just tested this again. I created a new file (a screenshot of this page) and saved it to my Dropbox folder. The file synced to my account with the current date and time. I then used a utility to change the Creation and Modified dates on the local file back to 2020. That change DID NOT sync to Dropbox, and now the same file in two locations has two different dates.

sohaibh

Thank you so much for your responses and thank you for running the test Rich! Follow up question: I can delete the pictures from dropbox and let them sync again from my hard drive. If I delete all the pictures on dropbox from the web interface, and run the sync, will it sync the pictures from my hard drive back to drop box, or will it delete pictures from my hard drive as well? Thanks in advance!!!

Rich

sohaibh wrote:
If I delete all the pictures on dropbox from the web interface, and run the sync, will it sync the pictures from my hard drive back to drop box, or will it delete pictures from my hard drive as well?

It would probably delete the local files as well. Here's how I would do it.

First, as a precaution, back up all of the files in your local Dropbox folder to a second location. On the Dropbox website, go to your Security page and unlink the computer from your account. As an extra precaution, I would uninstall Dropbox from the computer, then rename your local Dropbox folder to Dropbox_OLD or similar.

At this point there's no connection between your computer and Dropbox and you can safely delete the files in your account without them deleting the local copy. Once your account is empty, reinstall Dropbox and let it create a new, empty Dropbox folder. When the install is done, move or copy the files from Dropbox_OLD into the new Dropbox folder and allow them to sync. This will take a while so just let it work.

Just to be clear, I wouldn't do this for just the pictures in your account (assuming you have more than just pictures). I would delete everything from the account and start over as if it were brand new. As long as you back up your files first, there's not much risk at all.