What's the best way to calculate the size of a directory in .NET?

Question

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?

Answer 1

No, this looks like the recommended way to calculate directory size.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

This it the best way to calculate the size of a directory. Only other way would still use recursion but be a bit easier to use and isn't as flexible.

float folderSize = 0.0f;
FileInfo[] files = Directory.GetFiles(folder, "*", SearchOptions.AllDirectories);
foreach(FileInfo file in files) folderSize += file.Length;

Answer 4

As far as the best algorithm goes you probably have it right. I would recommend that you unravel the recursive function and use a stack of your own (remember a stack overflow is the end of the world in a .Net 2.0+ app, the exception can not be caught IIRC).

The most important thing is that if you are using it in any form of a UI put it on a worker thread that signals the UI thread with updates.

Answer 5

This code works but it is not thread safe. If a file gets delete while the loop is processing, the FileInfo.Length property throws a FileNotFoundException. I've been looking for a way to do this myself.

Answer 6

I've been fiddling with VS2008 and LINQ up until recently and this compact and short method works great for me (example is in VB.NET; requires LINQ / .NET FW 3.5+ of course):

Dim size As Int64 = (From strFile In My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles(strFolder, _
              FileIO.SearchOption.SearchAllSubDirectories) _
              Select New System.IO.FileInfo(strFile).Length).Sum()

Its short, it searches sub-directories and is simple to understand if you know LINQ syntax. You could even specify wildcards to search for specific files using the third parameter of the .GetFiles function.

I'm not a C# expert but you can add the My namespace on C# this way.

I think this way of obtaining a folder size is not only shorter and more modern than the way described on Hao's link, it basically uses the same loop-of-FileInfo method described there in the end.

Answer 7

@Mike Thompson:

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.

Your comment is really logically correct and sound, but when I tried with the similar approach I didn't find any difference in my size compared to the size I read through the properties of the directory.