Yes, have you never edited the metadata? Also most filesystems these days preserve it when copied, e.g. my camera's EXFAT filesystem on an SD card gets the creation date preserved when I copy it to my PC or NAS, or between NAS & laptop later.

> Yes, have you never edited the metadata?

I don't even know what that means.

And just because some OS's copy the creation date doesn't mean all of them do. Specifically, the most popular desktop OS -- Windows -- doesn't.

(And it has nothing to do with your filesystem. It's your OS.)

>I don't even know what that means

Obviously something like:

  touch -t 202309271530 myfile.txt

And I'm supposed to do that manually for each of the couple hundred photos I copy...?

I'm sorry if I have a hard time taking that suggestion seriously.

>Yes, have you never edited the metadata?

Is your suggestion that people edit the metadata to get the sorting they want? madness...