Re: Bug In NTFS Date/Time in Windows XP SP3 Fully Patched

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"John Wunderlich" wrote:

Stewart Berman <saberman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:4q49r45d599v53ole53fqsrtsnrr1q3gtu@xxxxxxx:

You are correct -- the USB drive does have a FAT32 file system not
NTFS. However, it is still a bug. If I modified a file at 1:15
AM on the 23rd of February it should show that time even if it is
the 8th of March. Otherwise the audit trail is not reliable.

On a NTFS-formatted drive, the file date is physically stored in UTC
time. There is no daylight savings time here. It is strictly GMT. The
file date/time is fixed. What does change is how time is _displayed_.
If you tell Windows you want the time displayed as Pacific Daylight
Time, then the system will subtract 7 hours from the actual recorded
time and show you that. It only _appears_ to shift by one hour because
you implicitly tell Windows that you want it displayed as Daylight time
instead of Standard time. The file date/time itself is recorded on
disk in GMT and does not change, thus 'audit trail' is physically
unbroken.

I have had the same problem, between my NTFS internal hard disk, and my
FAT32 esternal hard disk. You answer was very explanatory. You say that

On a NTFS-formatted drive, the file date is physically stored in UTC
time. There is no daylight savings time here. It is strictly GMT. The
file date/time is fixed. What does change is how time is _displayed_.

What has confused me is that when time switched from ST to DST, why were the
timestamps on all of my internal hard disk files changed at all? All that
needed to change was the system clock time, so that when "new" files are
created or old files "modified" they will have the correct "current"
timestamp. None of the pre-existing files were modified - so why were their
timestamps altered? Files need to "display" the true create/modify
timestamp, and not display create/modify time adjusted for current time. If
I go and talk with someone about changing a file, I need to remember if it
was changed during ST or DST, so I can adjust in my mind, what hour I should
ask about? Even if both the FAT32 and NTFS file systems changed the files
the same - to my lights it would still not be accurate. How can we keep
accurate date and timestamps, if ms just comes in and willy nilly changes
them?

deb



The FAT method of storing Local Time is much more problematic. If you
store a file on a laptop while on the East coast, then fly to the west
coast (or step across the Georgia-Alabama border), how does Windows
know which files on the disk should be time-shifted? Should it do a
complete disk scan?

It is not a 'bug' because Microsoft has designed, built, and documented
it that way and isn't likely to fix it. (actually, they probably have
fixed it by creating NTFS). I would catagorize it as undesirable
behavior, though.

In addition. Microsoft could easy fix the time stamp breaks
between NTFS and FAT32 by flushing the FAT32 cache when the
daylight savings time switch is done instead of requiring the user
to reboot at 3:00 AM. At least the file time stamps would be
consistent even if they are wrong.

There's no second-guessing Microsoft.
Complain all you want -- the bottom line is still the same: If you're
at all dependent on file date/time, you're _much_ better off switching
all of your drives to NTFS.

Cheers,
John

.

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