Why do saved Tracks have no time / Date data?

Most (if not all) Garmin GPSs will store Track data containing Position, Time / Date, and Altitude data from a past trip in it's internal memory as a file called Active Log, this file can be seen by Garmin Basecamp, when opened this file will display properties such as Total - elapsed - stopped time, Max - Min - Average - Moving Speed, Min - Max - Gradient - Accent - Decent Elevation and each Leg - Distance - Time - Speed - Course - Position.

On some units such as the GPSMap60 and some Etrex models the active log can be 'Saved' to a gpx file which is auto named with the current date, however these saved files have the Time / Date data stripped before saving, this can be very inconvenient as it removes a large proportion of the functionality of the file, also there may be as little as 20 gpx files saved before files start to get over written.

If the GPS does not have provision for a microSD card the saved Time / Date data will be lost and will not be recoverable, however for unit that do have a microSD card option you can goto Tracks >> Setup >> Data Card Setup and select an option called "Log Track to Data Card", when selected all Tracks will be backed up to the microSD card into a gpx file with the current date and the good news is that all Tracks are stored as Active Log files so that all original Time / Date data is retained

NOTE
It has been reported that on models where it is possible to re-name the Active Log to another name, that this re-naming will also strip off the Time / Date data from the Track