It took me a year to find time to get a OneDrive API library working, but I have confirmed my year-old report that InSync does not correctly sync Created Dates. In OneDrive,
- There is a FileSystemInfo facet that is supposed to be the authoritative created date for the info on the filesystem.
- There is also a Created Date on the web object (visible in the UI) that’s always set to the time it was first uploaded to the cloud.
I’ve found circumstances where the InSync OneDrive doesn’t respect either of these values when creating a file on the local filesystem. What does this mean? If you were to sync your entire Documents file to the cloud and to a second computer (all using InSync), the created dates would come out in a random order (the order they were… either uploaded or downloaded).
Since the dates on the source file system are right, most people won’t notice the issue until and unless they attempt to use the files on a second computer in a way that depends on the created date. I originally noticed the issue because photos synchronized from my new phone were behaving oddly. I worked with the developer of SkyFolio to make sure he was setting FileSystemInfo correctly and, for this reason, I highly recommend that app for android users who want to use OneDrive (perhaps with the native client so they download correctly).
Despite my report (including education about OneDrive/the FileSystemInfo facet), InSync is not willing to fix this unless others support this as an important issue and have encouraged me to post here.