Inconsistant dates appearing for IPad .jpg files on a PC

Question

I wrote a Windows NetBeans program to rename files to "file creation date/time", i.e. 150912_140023.JPG, to merge photos chronologically from a camera, Droid and iPad. I encountered a problem with the iPad .jpg files.

I am seeing an inconsistency in the file dates. If I do a DOS dir command on an iPad photo, I see a file date of 09/12/15. This is the date my program is retrieving. However, in a windows directory window, I see a date of 09/07/15 for the same file.

The correct date of the file is 09/07/15.

Why is there a difference? Can I replicate the date determination performed by a directory window to get the correct date?

Answer 1

The iOS filesystem stores four timestamps for a file: last access time, last data modification time, last status change time (time that the inode was changed), and creation time.

NTFS stores three timestamps for a file: last access time, last write time, and creation time.

Copying a file from an iPad to Windows might update any of these times on the copy, depending on how the copy program was written.

The DIR command displays the last write timestamp by default (I believe). You can specify which timestamp you want it to display using a command-line flag. The /t:c flag requests creation time. The /t:a flag requests last access time. The /t:w flag requests last write time.

It sounds like you want to run DIR /t:c.