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

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
crwardAsked:
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AxterConnect With a Mentor Commented:
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
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Jaime OlivaresSoftware ArchitectCommented:
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
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AxterCommented:
Look at DeviceIoControl API function
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AxterCommented:
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AxterCommented:
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grg99Commented:
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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