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Asked: 2026-05-11T02:20:09+00:00

I’ve written the following routine to manually traverse through a directory and calculate its

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I’ve written the following routine to manually traverse through a directory and calculate its size in C#/.NET:

  protected static float CalculateFolderSize(string folder) {     float folderSize = 0.0f;     try     {         //Checks if the path is valid or not         if (!Directory.Exists(folder))             return folderSize;         else         {             try             {                 foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(folder))                 {                     if (File.Exists(file))                     {                         FileInfo finfo = new FileInfo(file);                         folderSize += finfo.Length;                     }                 }                  foreach (string dir in Directory.GetDirectories(folder))                     folderSize += CalculateFolderSize(dir);             }             catch (NotSupportedException e)             {                 Console.WriteLine('Unable to calculate folder size: {0}', e.Message);             }         }     }     catch (UnauthorizedAccessException e)     {         Console.WriteLine('Unable to calculate folder size: {0}', e.Message);     }     return folderSize; }

I have an application which is running this routine repeatedly for a large number of folders. I’m wondering if there’s a more efficient way to calculate the size of a folder with .NET? I didn’t see anything specific in the framework. Should I be using P/Invoke and a Win32 API? What’s the most efficient way of calculating the size of a folder in .NET?

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1 Answer

  1. I do not believe there is a Win32 API to calculate the space consumed by a directory, although I stand to be corrected on this. If there were then I would assume Explorer would use it. If you get the Properties of a large directory in Explorer, the time it takes to give you the folder size is proportional to the number of files/sub-directories it contains.

    Your routine seems fairly neat & simple. Bear in mind that you are calculating the sum of the file lengths, not the actual space consumed on the disk. Space consumed by wasted space at the end of clusters, file streams etc, are being ignored.

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