[TheLoneWolfling]

And this is where having the API actually support, say, monitoring only items in a single directory would be good.

[MrDosu]

Well there is, but it's unreliable in certain edge cases. At least not reliable enough for a backup solution.

[TheLoneWolfling]

In which case the API is broken and should be fixed.

Also, what edge cases?

[MrDosu]

For example you have to allocate a buffer to hold the information you receive. If that's too small, you miss stuff. There is also a lot of intricacy with permissions and you can mess up a lot when multithreading without knowing how to properly interact with the OS then.

[TheLoneWolfling]

Wouldn't that be worse, if anything, for the whole-drive case?