access a disk/partition without a drive letter

23 Dec 2006 4:15 PM

unknown;

hi,

i want to write an application who can acces a disk/partition in
windows xp. I know how to do that if the disk/partition has a drive
letter. But in this case the disk has no driveletter and is in that
case for normal users invisible in windows xp.

i've searched the internet but i don't know where to look and i don;t
know how to describe my problem.

Now i'm hoping someone can give me an useefull URL or maby some code
(.NET or managed C++) so i can continue with this.

thanks

23 Dec 2006 6:25 PM

Alex Blekhman

"unknown;" wrote:
> i want to write an application who can acces a
> disk/partition in
> windows xp. I know how to do that if the disk/partition
> has a drive
> letter. But in this case the disk has no driveletter and
> is in that
> case for normal users invisible in windows xp.
>
> i've searched the internet but i don't know where to look
> and i don;t
> know how to describe my problem.

Look in MSDN for CreateFile function. There is explanation
of how an application can open physical drive.

25 Dec 2006 7:43 PM

Pavel A.

Show quote Hide quote

"unknown;" wrote:
> hi,
>
> i want to write an application who can acces a disk/partition in
> windows xp. I know how to do that if the disk/partition has a drive
> letter. But in this case the disk has no driveletter and is in that
> case for normal users invisible in windows xp.
>
> i've searched the internet but i don't know where to look and i don;t
> know how to describe my problem.
>
> Now i'm hoping someone can give me an useefull URL or maby some code
> (.NET or managed C++) so i can continue with this.
>

A drive can have no letter in two cases: a. It is mounted as a folder on
another NTFS volume. In this case you can find it using FindFirstVolume()
and it's friends.
b. It is not mounted at all (has no mount points) - in this case you can't
access it.

Regards,
--PA