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by didntcheck 684 days ago
Yep, and a lot of backup software will use them (along with file size, and other stat() fields) to determine if a file has changed, so backdating them can actually lead to silently stale backups
2 comments

Sometimes search indexing and build tools get it wrong, so if you know what you're doing, then tools like this allow you to provide an override.

Just browsing an old photo collection without making any changes can cause a 15 year old file to show up as a "new file", even though it's contents have not changed. This is especially true with media files that the os might take it upon itself to regenerate metadata for.

Or you may wish to store an accurate snapshot of the timestamps of cached or intermediate build artifacts.

It's 2024, any backup mechanism that isn't based on a delta between two snapshots is legacy from the old bad times.