Preserve System Fields When Copying SharePoint List Item

In previous post I explored the SharePoint List Item "Modified" field, which is considered as a system field. It will be exact the system time when the List item is created or updated. Sometimes we want to keep the original values of those fields when copying over List items, then we need to specifically assign those values. Following code snippet demos how to o preserve the original Created By, Created, Modified By and Modified fields:

        SPList origList = web.Lists.TryGetList("MyList");
        SPList newList = web.Lists.TryGetList("BackupList");
        foreach (SPListItem origItem in origList.Items)
        {
            SPListItem newItem = newList.Items.Add();
            newItem["Author"]   = origItem["Author"];   // Created By
            newItem["Created"]  = origItem["Created"];  // Created
            newItem["Editor"]   = origItem["Editor"];   // Modified By
            newItem["Modified"] = origItem["Modified"]; // Modified

            // Populate other fields

            newItem.Update();
        }