Does a scan modify last access timestamps?
Question / Problem
Will a scan of SpaceObServer change the last access time or any other timestamps of the file?
Answer / Solution
No, SpaceObServer does not change any time stamps of files or directories when scanning a file system branch. The scan engine works strictly read-only.
SpaceObServer does only access/read the file content if the MD5 checksum calculation is activated. However, in this case SpaceObServer uses a certain API to ensure the last access timestamp is not touched/modified.
An exception to this can be storage systems that run their own SMB/CIFS server instead of windows/NTFS, such as NetApp. Depending on the storage server settings, the API call used by SpaceObServer to protect the last access timestamp may not be honored by the server.