Directly reading/writing a HDD

[galapogos]

Hi,

I'm writing a console program to directly read from and write to an external USB HDD in sector level, and I'm wondering how to get started. I've only done file level I/O before on directly connected drives so I'm not sure how to identify the USB drive(USB VID/PID/serial number maybe?) and also how to address it directly. Are there any primers for this to help me get started?

Thanks!

[olivthill]

See:
http://www.lvr.com/usb.htm (Information, tools, and links by Jan Axelson)
http://www.usb.org/developers (USB-IF Developers Area)

[galapogos]

Hi,
I've visited the USB-IF website before. It seems to be more geared towards developers of USB devices. However, I'm simply trying to access the drive with C programming.

[kandukondein]

A USB HDD gets asssigned as a PhysicalDriveX right?
Try using CreateFile and WriteFile for opening and writing directly on to sectors. I have done it and its pretty simple.

Try looking at CreateFile in MSDN.

[galapogos]

Thanks. I'll check that out. Is there any way of identifying which drive I'm writing to(other than drive/volume letter) to make sure I'm writing to the right drive?

[galapogos]

OK so I tried CreateFile using the following syntax:

hUserPort = CreateFile("G:\"", GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);

but hUserPort keeps getting set to INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE.

I also tried GetLogicalDrives() and GetLogicalDriveStrings(), and while they work, they only give me the logical drive letter, so there's no way of physically identifying which drive I'm accessing...how do I do that?

[Krishnaa]

Have you never searched on internet ?? There are thousands of links on this topic.

Here,

INFO: Direct Drive Access Under Win32

Editing A Remote Hard Disk

Forensic Inspection of Hard Disks

Undeleting in Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP