How to preserve date created while moving files to downloads folder?

So I was transferring some files from my old mac to new one using an external drive. I was able to get all the files with their dates preserved to my users folder, however while moving them to downloads they change to present date and time. I understand that this must be a downloads folder property of resetting date to when it was first added, but is there any way to avoid this issue?

Solution 1:

Open terminal, and use the command line to copy files using cp with the option -a (archive, copies recursively); e.g.,

$ cp -a /Volumes/ExternalDrive/backups/my_dir ~/Downloads/
$ ls -la ~/Downloads/my_dir

For details on cp options and what they mean, in terminal, run man cp