Here is the background for my issue:
One of my client is a small civil engineering firm. They have around a terabyte of engineering data, organized by project, and further organized by sub-project and versioning codes. They are not using any automatic version control system, and so rely extensively on folder timestamps to make sure they're working with the right data. We are using DFS to replicate this data set between their two offices. One of the DFS partner servers was recently replaced and I managed to rebuild the replication set and get all the data copied over to the new server and in sync.
However, when I did this, all of the folder timestamps on the new server were updated to the date/time I began the replication job. All of the FILES kept their correct timestamps from before the initial replication, but EVERY folder in the directory tree has had its timestamp updated. On the old server, every file and folder has its correct, pre-replication modification date. What I need to do is back-date the modification timestamps on the new copy of the directory tree to match what's on the old copy. I have found a tool that should be able to do this (http://www.datamystic.com/dirdate.html#.UOsq3SQo7cs), but I am now wondering if this will cause any unintended consequences with the DFSR.
My questions are: is there a better way to do the initial replication which won't update the folder timestamps? Will backdating the folder timestamps have any other effect on replication? Is there a better way to go about this backdating process?