Search for specific files in a partition

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C#

Visual-Studio

C#4.0

I want to search for *.lnk files in a hard disk partition. How can I do this using C#?

Posted 10-Feb-13 2:05am

phantomlakshan

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-10T02:37:00

You cannot search for a file in all partitions, because not all partitions even have file systems or accessible to a user. It's more likely that you actually need to search for files in a volume.

All you need them is to find the file recursively starting from a root directory of a volume. All you need is this method:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/07wt70x2.aspx[^].

However, there is a nasty Microsoft problem you need to know about. Please see my past answer: Directory.Get.Files search pattern problem[^].

To find all volumes in the system, you can use WMI. Please see my past answer:
Get Pendrive Instance Handler ID in c#[^].

As this answer was about removable drives only, you should remove WHERE clause from the query I show.

—SA

OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-10T02:26:00

In theory it's pretty easy:

C#

string[] paths = Directory.GetFiles(@"D:\Temp", "*.lnk", SearchOption.AllDirectories);

But that will almost certainly fail unless your app has full access privileges - which it is not likely to have.
In that case, read the root directory with Directory.GetDirectories, then read all of them with the above code in a try...catch block, substituting each drirectory name for the fixed path I used. You can then ignore the exception that is thrown when you try to access the recycle bin!

Search for specific files in a partition

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