Directory.GetFiles keeping the last access time

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();
            }
        }

---

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...