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Low level disk i/o in C++ for editing the metafiles

Posted on 2004-08-22

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Last Modified: 2010-04-01

I currently own two Maxtor hard drives--both of which I've experienced at one time or another a failure or corruption of the master file table (\$MFT). As a result of this I frequently have backed up the drives metafiles using R-Studio NTFS, but have no way to restore the backed up files without typing in each byte from the backed up file. Frustrated by this, I decided to design a C++ program that would both read and write these metafiles, however I do not know how to do low-level disk I/O in C++ under Windows 2000. Can anyone point me in the right direction to how I might do low-level disk reads and writes in a Windows 2000 C++ environment so that I can save and restore my drives metafiles?

Thanks,

Chris

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Question by:crward

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6 Comments

LVL 55

Expert Comment

by:Jaime Olivares

ID: 118670432004-08-22

I guess Windows2000 won't allow you to write directly to any sector of your disk. So the unique solution I know is to build a driver to access IDE I/O port, just like in DOS.
Look at this question related to writting directly to system I/O ports.
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Programming_Languages/Dot_Net/VisualC_PLUS_PLUS_DOT_NET/Q_21045309.html

LVL 30

Expert Comment

by:Axter

ID: 118671712004-08-22

Look at DeviceIoControl API function

LVL 30

Expert Comment

by:Axter

ID: 118671972004-08-22

See following links:

http://Q_20666119
http://Q_20009071
http://Q_10081599
http://Q_20389244

LVL 30

Expert Comment

by:Axter

ID: 118672002004-08-22

Correction:
http:Q_20666119
http:Q_20009071
http:Q_10081599
http:Q_20389244

LVL 30

Accepted Solution

by:Axter

Axter earned 500 total points

ID: 118672152004-08-22

Verry strange. For some reason the links are not working right.

Lets try this one more time:
http:Q_20666119.html
http:Q_20009071.html
http:Q_10081599.html
http:Q_20389244.html

LVL 22

Expert Comment

by:grg99

ID: 118690132004-08-23

You can open up any disk device with some funny drive name incantation, see the drive paths that scroll up your screen when you do a "safe mode" boot. Put those in a call to CreateFile() and you shoul dbe good to go.

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