So I'm copying some stuff from my old MBP (running ML) to my new one (running Mavericks), and I'm trying to find a way to copy certain folders such that the "Date Added" metadata is preserved... I've tried dragging & dropping in Finder and also rsync from within Terminal, but the "Date Added" value always gets set to the current time on the target machine...
Is there any method for doing this?
Do you know what the rsync arguments were?
-t claims to preserve times, but I'm not sure if that covers date added, it is also part of the archive -a option.
I believe I tried -aE based on a forum thread I found on Google but I'll try -t too...
Seems like -a actually includes -t (man defines -a as "archive mode; same as -rlptgoD (no -H)") so date added definitely isn't part of it...
I mentioned that 🙂
I'm not sure it is possible. I think the data added is an Apple metadata attribute.
You can try tools like
Chronosync syncs well (just don't know about date added) if you want to tweak folders & exclusions etc, the preview may indicate what will copy.
http://www.econtechnologies.com/
SuperDuper! (designed for bootable backup really, not to easy to configure 'a bunch of folders').
CarbonCopyCloner (another bootable backup tool)
http://www.bombich.com/ccc_features.html
FWIW, the 10.9 rsync manual can be read online… https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/ man1/rsync.1.html
I think we can write that off ?
The Mac HFS+ tool SetFile doens't seem to offer the option either…
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/ man1/SetFile.1.html
I thought they may be extended attributes, but I can't see any mention of date added for items in my downloads folder.
xattr manual
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/ man1/xattr.1.html
You can find all the manuals at
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/ index.html
I'm afraid that I can't think how to copy it, I would run the rsync via sudo to see if that helps.
Haha oh yes, you did 🙂 Missed that sorry!
Will try these other options & see what happens... thanks heaps 🙂
See…
There are some insane solutions to setting date added in there, it turns out it is an extended attribute, but this 10.6 system doesn't have it!
mdls will show it, it is under the key 'kMDItemDateAdded'
Ironically I do remember being OCD about this at one point because I compiled rsync with some extra patches to preserve the xattrs.
Here is what my updated version reports…
/usr/local/bin/rsync --version
rsync version 3.0.7 protocol version 30
Copyright (C) 1996-2009 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace,
append, ACLs, xattrs, no iconv, symtimes, file-flags
Here is the version that 10.9 reports…
rsync --version
rsync version 2.6.9 protocol version 29
Copyright (C) 1996-2006 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Capabilities: 64-bit files, socketpairs, hard links, symlinks, batchfiles,
inplace, IPv6, 64-bit system inums, 64-bit internal inums
Apple are bad at keeping their installed tools updated - the patches have been around since 10.6, version 3 of rsync is also old now.
I believe I followed this guide by Mike Bombich (he makes CarbonCopyCloner).
http://static.afp548.com/mactips/rsync.html
So I would expect Carbon CopyCloner to preserve them (I think that is what it uses).
If that fails for you I can let you have the shell script that I used to compile it. However it was for 10.6 back in 2012. It does the same as Mike's guide as far as I can remember. You will need Xcode to compile it via the Terminal. It sounds a little extreme for just copying some files 🙂
Does that help?
Chronosync and CCC both failed to properly preserve Date Added when restoring some sample files to my new MBP, so it looks like it might not be doable... 😟
I'm not sure that it is, either.
"Date added" is special. I believe it's metadata added by Spotlight when a file is downloaded from an "untrusted" source (i.e. from the web; via Safari, Mail attachment, etc.). This way the first time you try to open this file, Gatekeeper will step in and apply the policies that it has set first. If you say it's OK, then the metadata indicating "Unsafe" and "date added" will be recoreded and you won't have to OK something on subsequent runs.
Gatekeeper and tagged downloads don't come into play on stuff copied over the LAN or other sources, so that _may_ be involved here.
Yeah Date Added seems to be especially weird - it doesn't even show up in Get Info, you can only really see it in List view in Finder, when you manually right-click the column headers and select it...
It's a default column in the "Downloads" folder, and not in any other folder. It is special, I just don't know enough about all the ways it's special and what falls out of that.
The "File was downloaded from…" dialog is when an item is in the QuarantineDB and the metadata is a part of the extended attribute "kMDItemWhereFroms"
Run 'mdls' on any download & you should see the urls.
The xattr -w command should write to the attributes (kMDItemDateAdded), but it simply refuses to update ones controlled by Spotlight…
xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDateAdded "2013-11-01 01:02:03 +0000" filename
Depending on how much you care about it there is this Applescript that simply "date-hack's" the file to the correct values.
If it's just sorting that annoys you can perform the copy with the destination volume in the privacy section of Spotlight prefs, it means the date added will be blank instead of the current time, just re-enable after completion, it seems to remain blank (but my index isn't rebuilt yet).
My guess is that Spotlight & fsevents need to be stopped from seeing the file being added.
How to copy a folder & preserve the "Date Added" metadata
