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Updated: 12:11 AM CT Feb 16, 2007 Posted: 12:11 AM CT Feb 16, 2007 How Do I Read a File As an Array of Bytes in C# Author: Steve Lautenschlager Snippet IO C# .NET  Summary How do I read a file as an array of bytes? .NET provides a lot of great tools for reading and writing files, lots of stream classes. If you're like me, I kind of find dealing with streams a pain. If I want to read a file I should only have to say "ReadFile" and the content should be there the way I want. As a result, I tend to write lots of helper methods that hide the stream manipulations so I don't have to remember them. Here's one that will read any file as an array of bytes. I've found this useful with both binary and text files when I didn't have to analyze the data inside--such as a simple file transfer. public static byte[] GetBytesFromFile(string fullFilePath) { // this method is limited to 2^32 byte files (4.2 GB) FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(fullFilePath); try { byte[] bytes = new byte[fs.Length]; fs.Read(bytes, 0, Convert.ToInt32(fs.Length)); fs.Close(); return bytes; } finally { fs.Close(); } }