I have a full drive of old JPEGs from the early 2000's (Canon A20) that I have added into a LR catalog. I have unchecked the catalog settings "Include Develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files". However, as I'm rating the JPEGs (using stars), I noticed that in the Mac Finder each JPEG's Created Date and Modified Date is updated to the current time, while the Content created date remains the same as before I rated the image. I also noticed there is not an XMP file associated with any JPEGs.
It is very important these JPEGs do not get modified in any way. Is there another setting that would place my modifications into a separate XMP file and leave the original JPEGs untouched?