Question

I have a project i’m working on where i need to verify the files in a local and a remote location machine. I have tried a couple of things. First i tried checking the CreationTimeUTC of both Files. I found out the creation time stores the time the file was created on the related file system, not the time the file was first created. As long as the file name matches and is the latest version. I dont “Really” want to read the entire contents and get an MD5 hash or some other form of identifier as reading the file may be impossible. (Getting the info of a file that’s open by another program for example would make this method impossible)

So basically what i’m asking;
Is there anything stored within the file header that denotes the files creation time or anything like that? Or if anyone can recommend another setting to use or method.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

When each file is copied from the local machine to the remote machine, assign the file’s creation time to a string using File.GetCreationTime, and then set creation time of the remote machine’s copy with File.SetCreationTime so it matches with the creation time of the original file.