Problems with time comparison - FTP to Android

[timg11]

I'm using BC 3.3.9 to attempt to sync my Android phone with a Windows 7 machine. Since we are still waiting for BC to support MTP (ahem), I'm using FTP as a stopgap. Not nearly as fast, and it turns out there are other problems.

Namely, the time comparison seems to have some problems.

On the Android device, one particular file has a timestamp of 12/2/2013 6:24 PM.

Once that file is synced to the Windows side, it has a timestamp of 12/2/2011 5:24 PM. Other attributes (size, name) are identical.

So the "ignore 1 hour differences" doesn't fix it because of the 2 year shift. Since there are several Gbytes of files, it is impractical to just let it copy all the files every time I need to sync a few.

Are there any workarounds for this?

[Aaron]

Hello,

Do you know why your server would assign a two year off timestamp? If you perform the copy with BC3 (3.3.8), another FTP client, or Explorer, do you see a similar old timestamp used?

My initial hunch is we should change the FTP Profile to manually set the timezone and see if that helps preserve a correct timestamp during the copy. If not, after the copy you can perform a content compare then Touch to set the timestamps to be equal.

[timg11]

I poked around the FTP Profile and changed the LIST options. I checked "Force Long Format" and "Compete Timestamps."

That seems to solve the problem - the dates are now correct with no shift to 2011.

Keep pushing towards getting real MTP support for BC. The FTP mode has so many issues and shortcomings compared to the "drive" mode of BC.

[Aaron]

MTP has its own set of issues and isn't completely uniform. For example, some devices that support MTP do not allow the timestamp to be set (so it is set to the time of the transfer to the device and cannot use the Touch command). We're still looking forward to MTP support, but FTP has its own set of advantages when compared to MTP.