[c#] Get all files and directories in specific path fast

I am creating a backup application where c# scans a directory. Before I use to have something like this in order to get all the files and subfiles in a directory:

DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo("A:\\");
var directories= di.GetFiles("*", SearchOption.AllDirectories);

foreach (FileInfo d in directories)
{
       //Add files to a list so that later they can be compared to see if each file
       // needs to be copid or not
}

The only problem with that is that sometimes a file could not be accessed and I get several errors. an example of an error that I get is:

As a result I created a recursive method that will scan all files in the current directory. If there where directories in that directory then the method will be called again passing that directory. The nice thing about this method is that I could place the files inside a try catch block giving me the option to add those files to a List if there where no errors and adding the directory to another list if I had errors.

try
{
    files = di.GetFiles(searchPattern, SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);               
}
catch
{
     //info of this folder was not able to get
     lstFilesErrors.Add(sDir(di));
     return;
}

So this method works great the only problem is that when I scan a large directory it takes to much times. How could I speed up this process? My actual method is this in case you need it.

private void startScan(DirectoryInfo di)
{
    //lstFilesErrors is a list of MyFile objects
    // I created that class because I wanted to store more specific information
    // about a file such as its comparePath name and other properties that I need 
    // in order to compare it with another list

    // lstFiles is a list of MyFile objects that store all the files
    // that are contained in path that I want to scan

    FileInfo[] files = null;
    DirectoryInfo[] directories = null;
    string searchPattern = "*.*";

    try
    {
        files = di.GetFiles(searchPattern, SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);               
    }
    catch
    {
        //info of this folder was not able to get
        lstFilesErrors.Add(sDir(di));
        return;
    }

    // if there are files in the directory then add those files to the list
    if (files != null)
    {
        foreach (FileInfo f in files)
        {
            lstFiles.Add(sFile(f));
        }
    }


    try
    {
        directories = di.GetDirectories(searchPattern, SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);
    }
    catch
    {
        lstFilesErrors.Add(sDir(di));
        return;
    }

    // if that directory has more directories then add them to the list then 
    // execute this function
    if (directories != null)
        foreach (DirectoryInfo d in directories)
        {
            FileInfo[] subFiles = null;
            DirectoryInfo[] subDir = null;

            bool isThereAnError = false;

            try
            {
                subFiles = d.GetFiles();
                subDir = d.GetDirectories();

            }
            catch
            {
                isThereAnError = true;                                                
            }

            if (isThereAnError)
                lstFilesErrors.Add(sDir(d));
            else
            {
                lstFiles.Add(sDir(d));
                startScan(d);
            }


        }

}

Ant the problem if I try to handle the exception with something like:

DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo("A:\\");
FileInfo[] directories = null;
            try
            {
                directories = di.GetFiles("*", SearchOption.AllDirectories);

            }
            catch (UnauthorizedAccessException e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("There was an error with UnauthorizedAccessException");
            }
            catch
            {
                Console.WriteLine("There was antother error");
            }

Is that if an exception occurs then I get no files.

I know this is old, but... Another option may be to use the FileSystemWatcher like so:

void SomeMethod()
{
    System.IO.FileSystemWatcher m_Watcher = new System.IO.FileSystemWatcher();
    m_Watcher.Path = path;
    m_Watcher.Filter = "*.*";
    m_Watcher.NotifyFilter = m_Watcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.LastAccess | NotifyFilters.LastWrite | NotifyFilters.FileName | NotifyFilters.DirectoryName;
    m_Watcher.Created += new FileSystemEventHandler(OnChanged);
    m_Watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
}

private void OnChanged(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e)
    {
        string path = e.FullPath;

        lock (listLock)
        {
            pathsToUpload.Add(path);
        }
    }

This would allow you to watch the directories for file changes with an extremely lightweight process, that you could then use to store the names of the files that changed so that you could back them up at the appropriate time.

You can use this to get all directories and sub-directories. Then simply loop through to process the files.

string[] folders = System.IO.Directory.GetDirectories(@"C:\My Sample Path\","*", System.IO.SearchOption.AllDirectories);

foreach(string f in folders)
{
   //call some function to get all files in folder
}

In .NET 4.0 there's the Directory.EnumerateFiles method which returns an IEnumerable<string> and is not loading all the files in memory. It's only once you start iterating over the returned collection that files will be returned and exceptions could be handled.

This method is much faster. You can only tel when placing a lot of files in a directory. My A:\ external hard drive contains almost 1 terabit so it makes a big difference when dealing with a lot of files.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo("A:\\");
    FullDirList(di, "*");
    Console.WriteLine("Done");
    Console.Read();
}

static List<FileInfo> files = new List<FileInfo>();  // List that will hold the files and subfiles in path
static List<DirectoryInfo> folders = new List<DirectoryInfo>(); // List that hold direcotries that cannot be accessed
static void FullDirList(DirectoryInfo dir, string searchPattern)
{
    // Console.WriteLine("Directory {0}", dir.FullName);
    // list the files
    try
    {
        foreach (FileInfo f in dir.GetFiles(searchPattern))
        {
            //Console.WriteLine("File {0}", f.FullName);
            files.Add(f);                    
        }
    }
    catch
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Directory {0}  \n could not be accessed!!!!", dir.FullName);                
        return;  // We alredy got an error trying to access dir so dont try to access it again
    }

    // process each directory
    // If I have been able to see the files in the directory I should also be able 
    // to look at its directories so I dont think I should place this in a try catch block
    foreach (DirectoryInfo d in dir.GetDirectories())
    {
        folders.Add(d);
        FullDirList(d, searchPattern);                    
    }

}

By the way I got this thanks to your comment Jim Mischel

Maybe it will be helpfull for you. You could use "DirectoryInfo.EnumerateFiles" method and handle UnauthorizedAccessException as you need.

using System;
using System.IO;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        DirectoryInfo diTop = new DirectoryInfo(@"d:\");
        try
        {
            foreach (var fi in diTop.EnumerateFiles())
            {
                try
                {
                    // Display each file over 10 MB; 
                    if (fi.Length > 10000000)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine("{0}\t\t{1}", fi.FullName, fi.Length.ToString("N0"));
                    }
                }
                catch (UnauthorizedAccessException UnAuthTop)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("{0}", UnAuthTop.Message);
                }
            }

            foreach (var di in diTop.EnumerateDirectories("*"))
            {
                try
                {
                    foreach (var fi in di.EnumerateFiles("*", SearchOption.AllDirectories))
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            // Display each file over 10 MB; 
                            if (fi.Length > 10000000)
                            {
                                Console.WriteLine("{0}\t\t{1}",  fi.FullName, fi.Length.ToString("N0"));
                            }
                        }
                        catch (UnauthorizedAccessException UnAuthFile)
                        {
                            Console.WriteLine("UnAuthFile: {0}", UnAuthFile.Message);
                        }
                    }
                }
                catch (UnauthorizedAccessException UnAuthSubDir)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("UnAuthSubDir: {0}", UnAuthSubDir.Message);
                }
            }
        }
        catch (DirectoryNotFoundException DirNotFound)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", DirNotFound.Message);
        }
        catch (UnauthorizedAccessException UnAuthDir)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("UnAuthDir: {0}", UnAuthDir.Message);
        }
        catch (PathTooLongException LongPath)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0}", LongPath.Message);
        }
    }
}

(copied this piece from my other answer in your other question)

Show progress when searching all files in a directory

Fast files enumeration

Of course, as you already know, there are a lot of ways of doing the enumeration itself... but none will be instantaneous. You could try using the USN Journal of the file system to do the scan. Take a look at this project in CodePlex: MFT Scanner in VB.NET... it found all the files in my IDE SATA (not SSD) drive in less than 15 seconds, and found 311000 files.

You will have to filter the files by path, so that only the files inside the path you are looking are returned. But that is the easy part of the job!

There is a long history of the .NET file enumeration methods being slow. The issue is there is not an instantaneous way of enumerating large directory structures. Even the accepted answer here has its issues with GC allocations.

The best I've been able to do is wrapped up in my library and exposed as the FindFile (source) class in the CSharpTest.Net.IO namespace. This class can enumerate files and folders without unneeded GC allocations and string marshalling.

The usage is simple enough, and the RaiseOnAccessDenied property will skip the directories and files the user does not have access to:

    private static long SizeOf(string directory)
    {
        var fcounter = new CSharpTest.Net.IO.FindFile(directory, "*", true, true, true);
        fcounter.RaiseOnAccessDenied = false;

        long size = 0, total = 0;
        fcounter.FileFound +=
            (o, e) =>
            {
                if (!e.IsDirectory)
                {
                    Interlocked.Increment(ref total);
                    size += e.Length;
                }
            };

        Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
        fcounter.Find();
        Console.WriteLine("Enumerated {0:n0} files totaling {1:n0} bytes in {2:n3} seconds.",
                          total, size, sw.Elapsed.TotalSeconds);
        return size;
    }

For my local C:\ drive this outputs the following:

Enumerated 810,046 files totaling 307,707,792,662 bytes in 232.876 seconds.

Your mileage may vary by drive speed, but this is the fastest method I've found of enumerating files in managed code. The event parameter is a mutating class of type FindFile.FileFoundEventArgs so be sure you do not keep a reference to it as it's values will change for each event raised.