Unique file identifier in windows

Here’s sample code that returns a unique File Index.

ApproachA() is what I came up with after a bit of research. ApproachB() is thanks to information in the links provided by Mattias and Rubens. Given a specific file, both approaches return the same file index (during my basic testing).

Some caveats from MSDN:

Support for file IDs is file
system-specific. File IDs are not
guaranteed to be unique over time,
because file systems are free to reuse
them. In some cases, the file ID for a
file can change over time.

In the FAT file system, the file ID is
generated from the first cluster of
the containing directory and the byte
offset within the directory of the
entry for the file. Some
defragmentation products change this
byte offset. (Windows in-box
defragmentation does not.) Thus, a FAT
file ID can change over time. Renaming
a file in the FAT file system can also
change the file ID, but only if the
new file name is longer than the old
one.

In the NTFS file system, a file keeps
the same file ID until it is deleted.
You can replace one file with another
file without changing the file ID by
using the ReplaceFile function.
However, the file ID of the
replacement file, not the replaced
file, is retained as the file ID of
the resulting file.

The first bolded comment above worries me. It’s not clear if this statement applies to FAT only, it seems to contradict the second bolded text. I guess further testing is the only way to be sure.

[Update: in my testing the file index/id changes when a file is moved from one internal NTFS hard drive to another internal NTFS hard drive.]

    public class WinAPI
    {
        [DllImport("ntdll.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        public static extern IntPtr NtQueryInformationFile(IntPtr fileHandle, ref IO_STATUS_BLOCK IoStatusBlock, IntPtr pInfoBlock, uint length, FILE_INFORMATION_CLASS fileInformation);

        public struct IO_STATUS_BLOCK
        {
            uint status;
            ulong information;
        }
        public struct _FILE_INTERNAL_INFORMATION {
          public ulong  IndexNumber;
        } 

        // Abbreviated, there are more values than shown
        public enum FILE_INFORMATION_CLASS
        {
            FileDirectoryInformation = 1,     // 1
            FileFullDirectoryInformation,     // 2
            FileBothDirectoryInformation,     // 3
            FileBasicInformation,         // 4
            FileStandardInformation,      // 5
            FileInternalInformation      // 6
        }

        [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        public static extern bool GetFileInformationByHandle(IntPtr hFile,out BY_HANDLE_FILE_INFORMATION lpFileInformation);

        public struct BY_HANDLE_FILE_INFORMATION
        {
            public uint FileAttributes;
            public FILETIME CreationTime;
            public FILETIME LastAccessTime;
            public FILETIME LastWriteTime;
            public uint VolumeSerialNumber;
            public uint FileSizeHigh;
            public uint FileSizeLow;
            public uint NumberOfLinks;
            public uint FileIndexHigh;
            public uint FileIndexLow;
        }
  }

  public class Test
  {
       public ulong ApproachA()
       {
                WinAPI.IO_STATUS_BLOCK iostatus=new WinAPI.IO_STATUS_BLOCK();

                WinAPI._FILE_INTERNAL_INFORMATION objectIDInfo = new WinAPI._FILE_INTERNAL_INFORMATION();

                int structSize = Marshal.SizeOf(objectIDInfo);

                FileInfo fi=new FileInfo(@"C:\Temp\testfile.txt");
                FileStream fs=fi.Open(FileMode.Open,FileAccess.Read,FileShare.ReadWrite);

                IntPtr res=WinAPI.NtQueryInformationFile(fs.Handle, ref iostatus, memPtr, (uint)structSize, WinAPI.FILE_INFORMATION_CLASS.FileInternalInformation);

                objectIDInfo = (WinAPI._FILE_INTERNAL_INFORMATION)Marshal.PtrToStructure(memPtr, typeof(WinAPI._FILE_INTERNAL_INFORMATION));

                fs.Close();

                Marshal.FreeHGlobal(memPtr);   

                return objectIDInfo.IndexNumber;

       }

       public ulong ApproachB()
       {
               WinAPI.BY_HANDLE_FILE_INFORMATION objectFileInfo=new WinAPI.BY_HANDLE_FILE_INFORMATION();

                FileInfo fi=new FileInfo(@"C:\Temp\testfile.txt");
                FileStream fs=fi.Open(FileMode.Open,FileAccess.Read,FileShare.ReadWrite);

                WinAPI.GetFileInformationByHandle(fs.Handle, out objectFileInfo);

                fs.Close();

                ulong fileIndex = ((ulong)objectFileInfo.FileIndexHigh << 32) + (ulong)objectFileInfo.FileIndexLow;

                return fileIndex;   
       }
  }