CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowswinapintfs
SeeR
SeeR

Reputation: 2168

NTFS - fastest way to find file by creation/modification date

Given:

What is the fastest way to search for all files with

("last modification date" > $date) or ("creation date" > $date)

Simply I want to search for all added or modified files.

For performance reasons I don't want to do recursive crawl of all subfolders and read every file attributes.
For technical reasons (i.e. UAC, NTFS documentation) I would like to avoid parsing \\.\$mft file

Is there some Windows API that will allow me to do search in that way?

Edit: One more constraint:
For maintenance reasons I don't want to be dependant on indexing service.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1721

Answers (2)

jrtipton
jrtipton

Reputation: 2459

I can say with certainty that there is no other realistic option given the problem as stated. FindFirst et al do not have a filtering mechanism. If you were keeping up with the USN journal, there might be some leeway, but otherwise, no.

Upvotes: 1

Byron Whitlock
Byron Whitlock

Reputation: 53871

If the windows indexing service is turned on, and the files you want are indexed, you quickly find your files using the query api.

Upvotes: 0

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