Get creation time of file in milliseconds

Timestamp resolution

The creation timestamp of a file in windows depends on the file system:

• FAT/VFAT has a maximum resolution of 2s

• NTFS has a maximum resolution of 100 ns

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wmic solution

You can use wmic to retrieve the file creation date to the nearest microsecond.

Example:

F:\test>wmic datafile where name="f:\\test\\test.txt" get creationdate | findstr /brc:[0-9]
20150329221650.080654+060

The creationdate 20150329221650.080654+060 is a timestamp, with the following format:

yyyymmddHHMMSS.xxxxxxsUUU

where:

• yyyy Four-digit year (0000 through 9999).

• mm Two-digit month (01 through 12).

• dd Two-digit day of the month (01 through 31).

• HH Two-digit hour of the day using the 24-hour clock (00 through 23).

• MM Two-digit minute in the hour (00 through 59).

• SS Two-digit number of seconds in the minute (00 through 59).

• xxxxxx Six-digit number of microseconds in the second (000000 through 999999)

• s Plus sign (+) or minus sign (-) to indicate a positive or negative offset from Coordinated Universal Times (UTC).

• UUU Three-digit offset indicating the number of minutes that the originating time zone deviates from UTC.

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stat solution

You can also use stat (from a cygwin or mingw installation).

Example:

DavidPostill@Hal /f/test
$ stat test.txt | grep Birth
 Birth: 2015-03-29 22:16:50.080654200 +0100

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dir output for comparison

F:\test>dir /t:c test.txt
 Volume in drive F is Expansion
 Volume Serial Number is 3656-BB63

 Directory of F:\test

29/03/2015  22:16                32 test.txt
               1 File(s)             32 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  1,798,546,849,792 bytes free

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Further Reading

• wmic
• Working with Dates and Times using WMI
• An A-Z Index of the Windows CMD command line is an excellent reference for all things Windows cmd line related.