# Creation Date 1970?



## Selwin (Jan 11, 2014)

Today I was browsing my photos in Finder, when I suddenly noticed that the Creation Date was January 1st 1970. At first, I thought there was something wrong with my latest photos. After searching back to images I captured in 2007 (screen shots display the first image I took with a dSLR ever) it turns out all of my images have this strange capture date. When I do a Finder search of all images with capture date before 1971, a dazzling 138,918 come up. The list includes all kinds of cameras: 5D, 5D2, 1DIV, D800e, etc. 

I also checked a backup drive that contains originals backups I created in 2007 (but later copied onto this new drive in 2013).

In Lightroom, dates are correct (see screen shots).

I was wondering if this is normal behaviour or if there is something I should look into. 




Thanks!


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## DaveS (Jan 11, 2014)

Hello.  Not entirely sure about Mac OS, but being a unix derivative, probably the following is the case.    January 1st 1970 is the "epoch" date in unix systems, i.e, the beginning of time.   So if the creation date is blank or zero, you end up with January 1st 1970.


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## Selwin (Jan 12, 2014)

Hi Dave, you are probably right then. 

Question #1 that remains: why are the dates blank in the first place. It hasn't always been like that, because in between I copied some images to my Macbook and those do have the correct creation date. Same originals.

Question #2: do I need to fix this?

I created a new LR5 catalog and imported 3 images that have 1970 as creation date when viewing them in Finder. In Lightroom the correct creation date is displayed. Still it does not feel OK to just leave it this way.

Any suggestions?


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## LouieSherwin (Jan 12, 2014)

Hi Selwin,

Did you have a problem with you system clock at some point. This is where the Finder create date comes from. If you were copying files at some point and the clock was not set every copied file could get the bogus create date. Or have you been using exiftool to adjust dates? 

Have you looked for any patterns? Are these files all in the same folder or on the same hard drive?

It does sound like the EXIF dates are ok since you are seeing the correct dates in Lightroom. 

You could use exiftool to extract the internal date and update the filesystem date back to the reasonable one. It depends on whether you need to have accurate searches by date from Finder or not. It is a lot of files to change.

-louie


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## Selwin (Jan 12, 2014)

Hi Louie, thanks for your input. I haven't had any problems with my system that I know of. I'm running a Mac Pro with a OWC Accelsior SDD-on-PCIe card (240GB). This "drive" is formatted into 3 partitions of 80GB each. One contained OSXSnow Leopard, the second contains my Lightroom catalog and the third is a Scratch disk. The date issue has happened during this configuration.
Last week I upgraded to Mountain Lion. I installed ML (fresh copy without apps) on the Lightroom partition, then when I checked all was working well I wiped the SL partition and made that my Lightroom partition. I have a 3TB backup drive hat also has the date issue, so the problem was not caused by this upgrade.
I did search for patterns, but haven't found any so far. I'll dig a little deeper tomorrow. So far I have checked my 5DmkII RAW files. All of my originals are on a 2TB internal hard drive (Master), and this drive is mirrored onto a second 2TB drive (Clone).
There are about 12,500 RAW files in the 5DmkII folder (with sub folders). About 10,000 have the 1970 creation date, the other 2,500 have the correct creation date. Those 2,500 are somewhere in the middle (date-wise). In the short time I had available (I had to rush out for an appointment) it's entire folders, not individual files.

I haven't used EXIF tool. All backup drives I have show the same files.


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## camner (Jan 12, 2014)

Selwin, you might consider using Graphic Converter from Thorsten Lemke (http://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/) to copy the exif creation date to the file creation date (and/or modification date).  GC is a useful tool (and it's really a swiss army knife of photo manipulation, which makes it a bit hard to figure out exactly how to get it do what one wants).  If this is of interest, I'm happy to post some screenshots of how to use GC's batch mode to mass update the file creation date from the exif date.

I don't think that LR cares at all about the file creation or modification date but only uses the exif data.  Personally, I just feel more comfortable having the file creation date of my original file match the exif date.   I can't say this is particularly rational.


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## Selwin (Jan 12, 2014)

Hi Camner, thanks for your suggestion, I'll keep it in mind. Quite frankly I won't go through fixing over 70000 images if Lightroom doesn't care. Yes I would also feel better if all dates should match and knowing it used to be OK is somehow disturbing because I don't like my OS doing things I never ordered it to do. 

I'll have a closer look to tomorrow at what is going on. I'll reply with any new info I'll find.

Thanks again to all of you for thinking with me on this one


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## Jack Henry (Jan 12, 2014)

Does the Finder 'Modification Date' show the correct date of the image?


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## Selwin (Jan 12, 2014)

Jack Henry said:


> Does the Finder 'Modification Date' show the correct date of the image?


Hi Jack, yes it does.


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## Selwin (Jan 12, 2014)

Meanwhile I found that there can be both be images with 1970 and correct creation dates within one and the same folder.

I had not erased my CF card from the last import. On my card, the creation date of the images is 29th dec 2013. On my hard drive, the creation date for those same images is 1-1-1970-01:00.

I shot one more image and imported that image. On the CF card and on the hard drive, the creation date for that single image is 12th of jan 2014.

Apparently, something happens to some images at some point. Even the images from last month are affected. Whatever happens, happens more than once and it happens frequently.


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## Selwin (Jan 12, 2014)

Okay, I've been looking at other files (not just photos) and apparently there are lots of files on my Mac Pro that have this issue. File types include: PDF's, htm, mht, xls, txt, bmp, cab, and many more. I have 5 disks in my Mac Pro with about 10 partitions in total and there are thousands of files affected on each partition.


"Confusticate and bebother these files!, Bilbo cried." Am I in trouble here? Should I maybe replace the Internal Backup Battery? I haven't noticed any changes in Date/Time settings, especially not 1970-like settings, but still...

When I revert to my trusted Snow Leopard OSX drive, the affected files show "Creation --", so the field is empty. Apparently Mountain Lion shows 1st of Jan 1970 for empty Date fields.

Anyway this means that this is no longer a Lightroom discussion, but a Mac Hardware/Software discussion that probably doesn't even belong on Lightroomforums. I'll go and post a topic on a Mac related forum to find out more. Any suggestions are still welcome…


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 13, 2014)

Do make sure you tell us what you find out.  I'm intrigued.


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## Selwin (Jan 13, 2014)

Hi Victoria, I will report back.

On some Mac forums, members are fairly sure the backup battery is the root of the issue. I ordered a new battery to avoid further trouble. The one thing I don't understand is why an empty backup battery would cause the Creation Date field to become empty. If I find out more I'll let you know.


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## LouieSherwin (Jan 13, 2014)

Hi Selwin,

After some further investigation on my own system, I too have a number of files with the creation date of 12/31/69. Not as many as you but a fair number. 

Regarding the backup battery it's main job is to keep the system clock running when it is powered down and/or disconnected from a power source. If that dies then the system date will be reset to 1970 until it can connect to a time server and get reset to the current time. Any files created in that gap would get a bogus create date. I don't think that this is happening here. 

There is something going on but I'm not sure what it is either. 

-louie


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## Selwin (Jan 13, 2014)

Hi Louie, that is perhaps the most interesting part of this issue  How do files that aren't subject to being worked on get their attributes changed? I find it quite intriguing myself, although it's always different when it's one's own system that has a problem... I'm not too worried because in Lightroom all is working well because it reads info from EXIF.


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## camner (Jan 13, 2014)

Selwin said:


> Hi Louie, that is perhaps the most interesting part of this issue  How do files that aren't subject to being worked on get their attributes changed? I find it quite intriguing myself, although it's always different when it's one's own system that has a problem... I'm not too worried because in Lightroom all is working well because it reads info from EXIF.




If you do want to repair this, using either or both of http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderAttributes/index.html and http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/ might suit you better than Graphic Converter.  Both of these apps are ones I've used (not nearly to their full potential) and they are really slick!

I've only had one occasion in 20 years when my Mac's backup battery went south, and things got really wonky.  I didn't have exactly the same symptoms, but all kinds of settings on my Mac disappeared/reappeared/changed, etc.  Changing the battery fixed it.  Unfortunately, I believe the battery on at least some models of Mac Pro are located in a rather inaccessible spot.

And, you may already know of this site, but I find forums.macrumors.com to be a great source of info/expertise on things Mac, and they have a dedicated sub forum for the Mac Pro.

_Edit:  Hmmmm...Looks as if you already know about macrumors...This  looks suspiciously like you!_


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## Selwin (Jan 14, 2014)

camner said:


> _Edit:  Hmmmm...Looks as if you already know about macrumors...This  looks suspiciously like you!_


Mum's the word about that one.


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## Selwin (Jan 14, 2014)

camner said:


> If you do want to repair this, using either or both of http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderAttributes/index.html and http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/ might suit you better than Graphic Converter.  Both of these apps are ones I've used (not nearly to their full potential) and they are really slick!
> 
> I've only had one occasion in 20 years when my Mac's backup battery went south, and things got really wonky.  I didn't have exactly the same symptoms, but all kinds of settings on my Mac disappeared/reappeared/changed, etc.  Changing the battery fixed it.  Unfortunately, I believe the battery on at least some models of Mac Pro are located in a rather inaccessible spot.


Thanks for the suggestions. I am more and more beginning to doubt that the battery is at fault. I will replace it anyway, but I unchecked the time server yesterday in Date and clock settings, switched off the MP for the night and the date was still correct when I booted this morning. I think it's very odd having files lose their Creation date field when they are not accessed by the user in any way. Therefore I suspect something else is going on. 

My replacement battery has arrived today (a genuine Panasonic BR2032, not CR2032) so I will take my MP apart tonight and install it, along with a Chinese USB3 PCIe card that arrived today as well.

To be continued...


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## Den (Jan 15, 2014)

Now Selwin, tell the truth. You have a time machine, took your DSLR's back to 1970 and amazed everyone. But some people didn't like that (mainly the camera manufacturers) and they made you hightail it back to the present. So all those images were actually taken in 1970:nod:


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## Selwin (Jan 15, 2014)

Den said:


> Now Selwin, tell the truth. You have a time machine, took your DSLR's back to 1970 and amazed everyone. But some people didn't like that (mainly the camera manufacturers) and they made you hightail it back to the present. So all those images were actually taken in 1970:nod:


Uh oh... They're on to me...:shock:


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## Roelof Moorlag (Jan 15, 2014)

> How do files that aren't subject to being worked on get their attributes changed


In the ingestion proces the files are not realy transfered from your card to your harddrive... They are newly created there.
Roelof


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## Jack Henry (Jan 15, 2014)

Selwin said:


> Uh oh... They're on to me...:shock:


At least have the courtesy to leave a note......


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## Selwin (Jan 16, 2014)

Ughh...you've found that too? Who are you guys?


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## Selwin (Jan 16, 2014)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> In the ingestion proces the files are not realy transfered from your card to your harddrive... They are newly created there.
> Roelof


Hi Roelof, that may well be true, I'm not that tech savvy so I'll have to rely on your insights. However, those files were ingested and thus created in 2007 and originally they did have the correct creation date. Something happened in between and now those fields are blank. If only I knew what that something was..... And the same thing goes for the long list of other file types like pdfs, word and excel docs, etc. Those were never ingested, just created at some point with a creation date.


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## Selwin (Jan 17, 2014)

camner said:


> If you do want to repair this, using either or both of http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderAttributes/index.html and http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/ might suit you better than Graphic Converter.  Both of these apps are ones I've used (not nearly to their full potential) and they are really slick!


I DL'd BetterFinderAtt 5 and it has a nice "Copy EXIF timestamp to creation date" feature. Possible to apply to subfolders and contents. That is really useful. Thanks for the links.

I also tried Graphic Converter but you are right it's a jungle of features and I can't seem to convert dates without ending up with a folder that contains jpegs that GC created from my RAW files. Better slap down some cash for the betterfinderatt app….


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## Selwin (Jan 11, 2014)

Today I was browsing my photos in Finder, when I suddenly noticed that the Creation Date was January 1st 1970. At first, I thought there was something wrong with my latest photos. After searching back to images I captured in 2007 (screen shots display the first image I took with a dSLR ever) it turns out all of my images have this strange capture date. When I do a Finder search of all images with capture date before 1971, a dazzling 138,918 come up. The list includes all kinds of cameras: 5D, 5D2, 1DIV, D800e, etc. 

I also checked a backup drive that contains originals backups I created in 2007 (but later copied onto this new drive in 2013).

In Lightroom, dates are correct (see screen shots).

I was wondering if this is normal behaviour or if there is something I should look into. 




Thanks!


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## camner (Jan 17, 2014)

Roelof Moorlag said:


> In the ingestion proces the files are not realy transfered from your card to your harddrive... They are newly created there.
> Roelof



In my experience, when the Mac OS makes the copies of the files that are on the camera card, the file creation date is equal to the date in EXIF, not the date of the transfer.  While it may be true (and of course, it is!) that the files are not really "transferred" but are "copied," the net result is a file on the computer that has the same date info as the file on the camera.


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## camner (Jan 17, 2014)

Selwin said:


> I DL'd BetterFinderAtt 5 and it has a nice "Copy EXIF timestamp to creation date" feature. Possible to apply to subfolders and contents. That is really useful. Thanks for the links.


You're welcome!

I also tried Graphic Converter but you are right it's a jungle of features and I can't seem to convert dates without ending up with a folder that contains jpegs that GC created from my RAW files. Better slap down some cash for the betterfinderatt app….[/QUOTE]
I've never personally used GC for RAW files...perhaps it can't operate on RAW files in the same manner.  It isn't a demosaicer (sp?) and RAW processor.


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