CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cfilesystemshard-drive
Álvaro
Álvaro

Reputation: 269

How to obtain direct access to raw HD data in C?

I need to do a complete format on a USB stick (FAT16 or FAT32), put a file on the drive, then delete it and recover the file using a C program.

Could anyone give me a hint on what should I use to accomplish this?

I understand the layouts of the FAT16/32 filesystems, the problem is that I don't know how to access the raw HD data using C (since I can't use things like fopen or mmap because the file isn't there anymore).

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1273

Answers (2)

wallyk
wallyk

Reputation: 57804

This is highly operating system specific.

For Linux, you would open the raw device /dev/sdxx. Note that there are privilege hoops to manage.

For Windows, you would use something like:

 HANDLE h = CreateFile ("\\\\.\\PhysicalDriveX", GENERIC_READ,
                    FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL,
                    OPEN_EXISTING,
                    FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING | FILE_FLAG_RANDOM_ACCESS,
                    NULL);

where X depends on the device.

Upvotes: 8

fge
fge

Reputation: 121840

Just use normal filesystem operations on the disk device.

This means you need to identify the disk device first, of course. But once opened, you can even mmap() it.

Upvotes: 2

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