What file systems on Linux store the creation time?

Several file systems store the file creation time, although there is no standard name for this field:

  • ufs2 → st_birthtime
  • zfs → crtime
  • ext4 → crtime
  • btrfs → otime
  • jfs → di_otime

The ext4 file system does store the creation time. stat -c %W myfile can show it to you.


As far as I know ext4, JFS and BTRFS file systems all support an extra field in the files inode to store the creation time, though the naming might differ.

Source: LWN File Creation Times