how to use powershell to copy file and retain original timestamp

Question

I would like to copy some files or a folder of files from one file server to another. However, I want to keep the original timestamp and file attributes so that the newly copied files will have the same timestamp of the original files. Thanks in advance on any answer.

Answer 1

Here's a powershell function that'll do what you're asking... It does absolutely no sanity checking, so caveat emptor...

function Copy-FileWithTimestamp {
[cmdletbinding()]
param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position=0)][string]$Path,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,Position=1)][string]$Destination
)

    $origLastWriteTime = ( Get-ChildItem $Path ).LastWriteTime
    Copy-Item -Path $Path -Destination $Destination
    (Get-ChildItem $Destination).LastWriteTime = $origLastWriteTime
}

Once you've run loaded that, you can do something like:

Copy-FileWithTimestamp foo bar

(you can also name it something shorter, but with tab completion, not that big of a deal...)

Answer 2

Here is how you can copy over the time stamps, attributes, and permissions.

$srcpath = 'C:\somepath'
$dstpath = 'C:\anotherpath'
$files = gci $srcpath

foreach ($srcfile in $files) {
  # Build destination file path
  $dstfile = [io.FileInfo]($dstpath, '\', $srcfile.name -join '')

  # Copy the file
  cp $srcfile.FullName $dstfile.FullName

  # Make sure file was copied and exists before copying over properties/attributes
  if ($dstfile.Exists) {
    $dstfile.CreationTime = $srcfile.CreationTime
    $dstfile.LastAccessTime = $srcfile.LastAccessTime
    $dstfile.LastWriteTime = $srcfile.LastWriteTime
    $dstfile.Attributes = $srcfile.Attributes
    $dstfile.SetAccessControl($srcfile.GetAccessControl())
  }
}