Move Photos to a USB Stick and Keep the Dates
Why photos copied to a USB stick or SD card lose their dates, what FAT32 and exFAT can store, and how to make the dates survive any drive.
You copied the family photos onto a USB stick for the TV, or for a relative. On the TV they play in a random order. On the relative's computer they all say they were created the day you copied them. The stick did something to the dates.
What a USB stick can and cannot store
Most sticks and SD cards are formatted FAT32 or exFAT, because those work on every device. Both are old and simple, and their timestamps are limited.
FAT32 stores the modified time to the nearest two seconds, the creation time to ten milliseconds, and neither with a time zone. Dates before 1980 cannot be stored at all. Copy a file from a computer whose clock is in one zone to a stick read in another and the time shifts by the difference.
exFAT is better: it has a time zone field and finer resolution. But it is still a filesystem date, and a filesystem date is only as good as the copy operation that wrote it.
The copy operation is the real problem. Drag and drop in Finder or Explorer copies the modified date on most systems, but sets the created date to now. Some copy tools reset both. Android and TV firmware reading the stick may show either one.
The date that survives the trip
The date inside the photo. EXIF DateTimeOriginal is part of the file's bytes. It is copied with the image, whatever the filesystem, however the copy is done. A stick cannot damage it.
The catch is that many devices reading a stick do not look at it. A TV's built-in photo viewer, a digital photo frame and most car head units sort by filename or by filesystem date. Photo apps read EXIF. Simple viewers do not.
So there are two goals, and they need two different fixes. For photo apps, make sure EXIF is right. For simple viewers, make the filename carry the date, because the filename is the one thing they all sort by.
Fixing it by hand
First check EXIF is intact. exiftool -DateTimeOriginal *.jpg in the folder lists the dates. If they are there, the photos are fine for any app that reads them.
For the TV and the frame, rename with the date first. exiftool does it:
exiftool "-FileName<DateTimeOriginal" -d "%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%%-c.%%e" .Now 2016-08-14-1105.jpg sorts before 2016-08-15-0900.jpg on any device, in any language, with no metadata read at all. More on naming schemes in /blog/rename-photos-by-date-taken-bulk.
You can also copy the EXIF date onto the file's modified time before copying to the stick, so devices that sort by file date also get it right:
exiftool "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" .FAT32 will round it to two seconds and strip the zone, which does not matter for ordering.
Photos with no EXIF date, such as ones from WhatsApp or from an old Google Photos export, need the date written in first. Otherwise the rename gives them today's date and the problem moves rather than goes away.
Doing it with the app
Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer can organize straight onto a USB stick or SD card, and it fixes the dates on the way.
Pick the stick as the destination. For each photo the app writes the real date into EXIF, taken from a Takeout sidecar if there is one, otherwise from the existing EXIF, otherwise from the file date. It sets the file timestamps to match, within what the stick's filesystem allows. Filenames get the date at the front with the template you choose, so the TV sorts them right. Folders can be Year/Month or flat.
Photos land in a DCIM folder on the stick, which is where cameras and many TVs and frames look first. HEIC can be converted to JPG on the way, because almost no TV opens HEIC. Sideways photos are rotated upright, since TVs are the devices most likely to ignore the orientation tag. Old videos can be converted to MP4 for the same reason.
The app checks free space on the stick before it starts, and a dry run shows the result without writing. Offline, on macOS, Windows and Linux. Free for 500 photos, $9.99 one-time for unlimited.
Frequently asked questions
Should I format the stick as exFAT or FAT32?
exFAT if every device that will read it supports it. Most TVs and computers from the last ten years do. FAT32 if you need an old device to read it, and accept the 4 GB file size limit, which matters for videos.
The TV shows the photos in a strange order even with dated filenames. Why?
Some TVs sort by the order files were written to the stick, not by name. Copying the files in name order, one folder at a time, usually fixes it. A few TVs sort by nothing at all.
Do I lose anything copying to FAT32?
The file's timestamps lose precision and time zone. The photo, its EXIF and its GPS are unchanged. Nothing that matters is lost.
Why does the stick show all photos with today's date on another computer?
The creation date was set to the copy time, and that computer shows creation date by default. Sort by modified date instead, or rename with the date in front so it does not matter.