I’m now unable to edit the original post, but I found another related feature request which is more or less the same idea, but this discussion has a workaround involving partitions and the use of ddrescue on Linux. This also touches upon cp -p which I’ve tested myself, though sadly it doesn’t preserve creation times, only modification times.
Right now, I’m using Templater instead of Templates to fulfill the {{cdate}} and {{ctime}} inserts, and would like to add to the “…fixed time format”, with “while allowing users to specify one-off custom formats as seen on the {{date}} and {{time}} inserts.”