Question

Raw disk sectors

Asked by: krydea

Hello,

I'm wondering how a format/data recovery routine would look like. I guess reading raw disk sectors from a partition?
I’m starting from the situation that a partition is formatted. After the format I would like to create a list of the old files. And save a raw sector to a file.
I don't know how to do such a thing. Maybe someone has an idea?

Thanks Carlas Smith

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Asked On
2006-08-13 at 04:51:39ID21952680
Tags

disk

,

format

,

raw

,

sectors

Topic

Delphi Programming

Participating Experts
3
Points
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Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: Programmer-xPosted on 2006-08-13 at 05:53:59ID: 17305114

Hi!

I think you should write some In-Line assembly codes to set direct access to disk sectors...

take a look at Interrupts at 13xx ... some Ints for disk I/O

Ralf Brown Interrupt List =>
http://www.ctyme.com/rbrown.htm

~HRV

 

by: Workshop_AlexPosted on 2006-08-14 at 00:51:35ID: 17308542

Well, Windows doesn't allow access to raw sectors anymore. You can still access the logical sectors, btw. What you have to do is use CreateFile and the DeviceIoControl functions to access the drive and partition table (and other data) of a drive, in a reasonable safe way. (Until you start writing data.) As filename you would use e.g. '\\.\A:' and that should give you access to the drive. With DeviceIoControl you will have more control over the drive and it's many additional functions.

Be aware: Writing data to this 'file' will be hazardous to your harddisk if you write the wrong thing. Use at your own risk! One mistake and you can start installing Windows on your system again from scratch... (If your harddisk is still alive.)

 

by: krydeaPosted on 2006-08-14 at 06:50:43ID: 17310035

Could get into more detail by giving me a 'read' example?

 

by: Workshop_AlexPosted on 2006-08-14 at 08:13:23ID: 17310781

http://www.thedelphimagazine.com/samples/1696/article.htm is a nice example, but it opens a file, not a disk.
http://www.swissdelphicenter.ch/torry/showcode.php?id=2458 gives some more information.

http://www.google.nl/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&q=CreateFile+DeviceIoControl+delphi&btnG=Search is the search I used, with Google. :-)

I myself never even tried to access my drive instead of a file.

 

by: CodedKPosted on 2006-08-15 at 00:00:23ID: 17316066

Hi krydea.

Look at this :

Raw disk access
http://www.e-f-w.com/content.php?cid=rda

RDA makes direct, low-level, byte-precise reads and writes to mass-storage devices easy. No need to have to deal with DOS interrupt calls or any such nonsense - RDA takes care of all the behind-the-scenes work for you. RDA also handles the variations in access methods needed by different Windows versions. RDA can read from or write to any specific sector on a logical drive.

Free and open source (Delphi)


Also
Check this out :
http://www.torry.net/authorsmore.php?id=4451

Its a component (Freeware with Full source) that can access any mass-storage devices easy.
(direct, low-level, byte-precise read and write)


Hope this helps :)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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