How-to: Reset FOLDER Last Modified Date/Time to match the files.

An NTFS drive will allow many events to update the Last Modified date of a folder to Today/Now:

• Editing a file.
• Copying or moving a new file into the folder.
• Copying the entire folder to a new disk.
• Deleting or Moving a file from the folder.
• Adding or Removing a sub-folder.

Being aware of such changes to the file system is valuable, but when the files have just been restored from a backup or moved to a new disk, the folders (but not the files) may sometimes adopt dates reflecting the date of that server change.
It is often more useful to reset each folder’s date /time to reflect the date/time of the most recent file it contains.

The function below does just that, given a path to a folder it sets the folder Last Modified date to match the age of the newest file, it also recurses through any sub folders and sets those folder dates in the same way.

Because this has to compare the Last Modified date of every file, it can take some time to process a very large folder hierarchy.

When running this you may need to close any Windows Explorer sessions, as they will read and lock the Last Modified property.

Function Set-LastWrite {
    # Reset FOLDER Last Modified Date/Time - Last update: 2023-01-11
    Param (
        [string] $path
    )

    # Variable to hold the newest file date/time
    $default = (Get-Date "01/01/1980 12:30 am")
    $newest = $default

    # Find the newest item in the folder (-force to include hidden files)
    Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Exclude "thumbs.db" -force | ForEach-Object {
        if ($_.PSIsContainer) {
            # Recurse into subfolder
            Set-LastWrite $_.fullname
 
            # Read the sub folder again in case its LastWriteTime has changed
            $sub = Get-Item -force -Path $_.fullname
            if ($sub.LastWriteTime -gt $newest) {
                $newest = $sub.LastWriteTime
            }
        }
        elseif ($_.LastWriteTime -gt $newest) {
            $newest = $_.LastWriteTime
        }
    }

    # Set the folder last modified date to match the age of the newest item
    if ($newest -gt $default) {
        $(Get-Item $path).lastwritetime = $newest
    }
    "Done: $path"
}

The file Thumbs.db is an image cache for viewing thumbnails in Windows Explorer, so it has been excluded.

If you run this code against a large number of files that pre-date the year 2000, you may on occasion run into year 2000 bugs. It was not uncommon for some 90’s era software to write files dates like 06/12/97
Those 2 digit years may in some circumstances get translated into 06/12/2097 and that will propagate up to the folder calculations.

To display a 4 digit year in Windows Explorer open Control Panel ➞ Regional Settings ➞ Date format ➞ Short date > YYYY
The Touch script linked below can be used to fix any incorrect dates.

Example:

Reset the last modified date of the folder C:\demo\ to match the newest file in the folder:

PS C:\> Set-LastWrite "C:\demo"

“Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Related PowerShell Cmdlets

StampMe - Rename a file with the current Date/Time.
Touch - Change the date/time of a file/folder.
ROBOCOPY - Robust File and Folder Copy (CMD Shell).
Long Filenames - NTFS long filenames (>260 chars).