FileSystemWatcher vs polling to watch for file changes

Question

I need to setup an application that watches for files being created in a directory, both locally or on a network drive.

Would the FileSystemWatcher or p

Answer 1

The FileSystemWatcher may also miss changes during busy times, if the number of queued changes overflows the buffer provided. This is not a limitation of the .NET class per se, but of the underlying Win32 infrastructure. In our experience, the best way to minimize this problem is to dequeue the notifications as quickly as possible and deal with them on another thread.

As mentioned by @ChillTemp above, the watcher may not work on non-Windows shares. For example, it will not work at all on mounted Novell drives.

I agree that a good compromise is to do an occasional poll to pick up any missed changes.