The option -a means “preserve most metadata”, which includes the owner if running as root only. You can also use rsync and tell it what you want to preserve. If you perform a cut paste from one folder to another on a different logical volume you will get new creation and new modified dates. With GNU cp, you can use the -preserve=… option to contol what metadata is replicated more finely, e.g. The file's modification time isn't preserved. This preserves the file's permissions to some extent (e.g. High-speed diff file copy by update date or filesize. Because reading/writing are processed with no OS cache at all, other applications dont easily become slow. Automatically selects different methods according to whether Source and DestDir are in the same or different HDD. cp '$backupfile' '$destination' & rm '$backupfile' RapidCopy is the portable version of FastCopy that runs on Mac OS X. Since you're moving to a different filesystem and you don't want to replicate much metadata, you might as well copy the file then remove the original. When you move a file to a different filesystem, mv copies the file, attempts to replicate as much metadata as possible, and removes the original. When you move a file within the same filesystem, mv detaches the file from its old location and attaches it to its new location metadata such as permissions remains the same.

Fastcopy change date modified