Question for understanding the methods of comparison (date and size or content)

[sounders]

Hello :-)

I hope that I am writing in the correct forum now, since I am a beginner. If not - feel free to move this thread to another subforum :-)

My question is about the two methods for comparing the "left and the right side", since I'd really like to know how FreeFileSync works (though, I am not a programmer).

I did the following and do not understand the behaviour of FreeFileSync (method: compare date and size):

- Create a file (file: last changed 23:00)
- Sync this file, so that the file which was last changed at 23:00 is on both computers (in the network)
- Change the date/time of one computer (to 22:00) and change things in the file (without changing the size of the file!) on the computer with "manipulated" time. Result: On one computer is a file with "last changed 23:00", on the other a file with "last changed 22:00".

What I thought: Okay, normally, FreeFileSync should detect that the file I edited on the computer with "manipulated time" is "older" (since I changed time there) than the other file on the other computer and therefore sync NOTHING

What happened: FreeFileSync synced and detected that the file with "22:00" is newer than the file with "23:00" (this is in fact true, since the 22:00-file is the file where I last changed things, but, just looking at the time, it should have been the other way round).

My assumption: FreeFileSync doesn't really compare the date of two files. It just detects (based on an internal database created for each file?) on which side something has been changed (here: on which side did the date/time change).

Am I right with this? I hope that this question (and little "experiment") isn't too stupid, but I just want to find out how the things work :-)