Writing direct to a particular disk sector

[kevinf2349]

I have a strange need....but enough about my private life...seriously though.

Is it possible to use VB.Net to write directly to a particular spot on a disk? Essentially what I need to do is the equivalent of zapping a bit in a file but I need to do it in place so I effectively want to write a value to a very specific place on a disk.

Is it possible and if so how is the best way of going about it? I have tried to read the file in memory with a binary reader and then write it back out but the file is showing corrupt. I suspect that the problem is that the internal data structure of that particular file is a little weird.

 

[chiph]

You would need to write some C code that would talk to a disk device driver. User-mode code under NT/2k/XP can't read/write to a specific sector as that would be a security violation (the OS would stop you).

Chip H.


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[kevinf2349]

Thanks Chip