No, you do not need to, nor can you set the date. (You are likely referring to what your computer ‘sees’ when viewing your files).

The word “Date” that you see inside the MODX firmware refers to the Sort Order when viewing items you have created...
Date: Sorts in order of storing. When the lower arrow is displayed, the List is arranged in descending order (newer to older). When the upper arrow is displayed, the List is arranged in ascending order.

I just made a backup file (.X8A) of my MODX7 on a USB memory stick, and had the same issue. When using file explorer to view the USB backup file on a PC, the date is 12/31/1999, but I did the backup on 8/21/2020. Can the date on the MODX be set to the current day and time and then advance like a clock? Time stamping is useful for keeping several backups on the same memory stick and other organization reasons. Yes, I could work around with coding the date in the name.

MODX and Montage do not have a realtime clock. Timestamps in file saves are therefore meaningless.

Since the time is reset every time the unit is turned on, I had wished they would advance the date by one day every time the unit is powered on. So on power-on, the logic would be:

1) Recall date as saved in system registers
2) Set date (internal clock date - not time) based on saved registers
3) Write (save) registers as recalled date + 1 day.

Recalling X?A, X?L, or X?U files should not update this register. Only a factory reset would reset the register (back to "day 1" ).

This way even though the date wouldn't "make sense" vs. the calendar - at least relative time would work out. One could tell "this save file is older than this other one". At the moment, you can't determine this.

The "fix" (workaround) is to timestamp your save files in the file name. At least notate the date. "20200821_Savefile" as one example. I usually put the year first then month then day so listing by name order will also be by date order.

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