Directly reading/writing a HDD

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!

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

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.

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.

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?

OK so I tried CreateFile using the following syntax:

Code:

---

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?

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