On NTFS (under Windows) it's handled rather straightforwardly. When a file is originally created it's given a date created timestamp. If the file is copied naiv

On NTFS (under Windows) it's handled rather straightforwardly. When a file is originally created it's given a date created timestamp. If the file is copied naively the date created timestamp changes to that of the copy time, while the date modified remains intact. However it's easy to preserve the date created timestamp during a copy using the native Robocopy utility, among many other methods. It's simply treated as date modified is: modifiable and arbitrary. This makes restoring from backups sensible. Have a drive that has died? Can do a file-based restore without the need for images and preserve such metadata. Individual file unexpectedly deleted? Restore it and regain the timestamps. The benefit is one has a transferable reference for when files were originally made, even if they lack internal metadata that stores this (such as eg: EXIF for images). Under Linux, even with its now kernel-based NTFS support, it just adds NTFS-specific data like date creation timestamps as peripheral extended attributes, which Linux file managers broadly don't expose or handle well. While native filesystems like EXT4 which support creation time are impractically limited to unmodifiable date creation timestamps based on their first creation on that particular instance of the filesystem, without hacky and fragile workarounds. That is despite `touch` being ubiquitous on Linux for modifying date modified timestamps (showing that in practical terms, it's considered similarly arbitrary metadata) which from what I've seen Linux users appear to have no disagreements with about its utility. As a Windows user who would like to migrate to Linux this aspect makes it frustratingly a non-starter, as even if one uses SMB to access the files (adding its own layer for such compatible metadata, regardless of the underlying filesystem) Linux file managers still don't handle well extended attributes so management for such files under Linux isn't at parity.