Question

It appears that Directory.GetFiles() in C# modifies the Last access date of a file. I’ve googled for hours and can’t seem to find a work around for this issue. Is there anyway to keep all the MAC (Modified, Accessed, Created) attributes of a file? I’m using Directory.GetDirectories(), Directory.GetFiles(), and FileInfo.

Also, the fi.LastAccessTime is giving strange results — the date is correct, however, the time is off by 2 minutes, or a few hours.

Time of function execution: 10/31/2008 8:35 AM  Program Shows As              Last Access Time 0_PDFIndex.html               - 10/31/2008 8:17:24 AM AdvancedArithmetic.pdf        - 10/31/2008 8:31:05 AM AdvancedControlStructures.pdf - 10/30/2008 1:18:00 PM AoAIX.pdf                     - 10/30/2008 1:18:00 PM AoATOC.pdf                    - 10/30/2008 12:29:51 PM AoATOC2.pdf                   - 10/30/2008 1:18:00 PM  Actual                        Last Access Time 0_PDFIndex.html               - 10/31/2008 8:17 AM AdvancedArithmetic.pdf        - 10/30/2008 12:29 PM AdvancedControlStructures.pdf - 10/30/2008 12:29 PM AoAIX.pdf                     - 10/30/2008 12:29 PM AoATOC.pdf                    - 10/30/2008 12:29 PM AoATOC2.pdf                   - 10/30/2008 12:29 PM 

Below is the method I’m using. If you require more information, please let me know.

Thanks!

public void PopulateTreeView(string directoryValue, ref TreeNode parentNode)         {             string[] directoryArray = Directory.GetDirectories(directoryValue);             string[] fileArray = Directory.GetFiles(directoryValue, '*.*', SearchOption.AllDirectories);              try             {                 #region Directories                 if (directoryArray.Length != 0)                 {                     foreach (string directory in directoryArray)                     {                         DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo(directory);                          TreeNode dirNode = parentNode.Nodes.Add(di.Name);                          FileNode fn = new FileNode();                         fn.bIsDir = true;                         fn.dir = di;                          dirNode.Tag = fn;                         PopulateTreeView(directory, ref dirNode);                         Application.DoEvents();                      }                 }                 #endregion                  #region Files                 if (fileArray.Length != 0)                 {                     foreach (string file in fileArray)                     {                         FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(file);                          TreeNode fileNode = parentNode.Nodes.Add(fi.Name);                         FileNode fn = new FileNode();                         fn.bIsDir = false;                         fn.file = fi;                          fileNode.Tag = fn;                          fileNode.ImageIndex = 1;                          Console.WriteLine(fi.Name + ' - ' + fi.LastAccessTime);                      }                 }                 #endregion              }             catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)             {                 parentNode.Nodes.Add('Access denied');             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());             }             finally             {                 Application.DoEvents();             }         } 

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i know the differences between the attributes. What i need is for the file to remain exactly the same all attributes and meta-data, as if my program never touched the file; this includes the last access date.

Answer 1

I know this is far from ideal, but u can use fsutil (provided with Windows) to disable last access time writing:

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 

Presumably you’d set it back to 0 once done. You can invoke this using Process.Start from C#, but there must be a better programmatic way (calling into Windows API).

Process.Start('fsutil', 'behavior set disablelastaccess 1').WaitForExit(); 

Do note that this is a global Windows setting and would also affect disk access from outside your app…