I am writing a small app which uses CreateFile to get handles to the volumes present on a system. The access mode specified is GENERIC_ALL and the share mode is FILE_SHARE_WRITE. The call to CreateFile is successful for all volumes barring the system volume. I googled a lot but there is no clear information about whether its possible for me to get an exclusive lock on system volume. The OS I am working on is Windows 2008 Server. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Prashant
pulled this of my msdn maybe it will help you out
Physical Disks and Volumes
You can use the CreateFile function to open a physical disk drive or a volume. The function returns a handle that can be used with the DeviceIoControl function. This enables you to access the disk partition table. However, it is potentially dangerous to do so, because an incorrect write to a disk could make its contents inaccessible. The following requirements must be met for such a call to succeed:
The caller must have administrative privileges. For more information, see Running with Special Privileges.
The dwCreationDisposition parameter must have the OPEN_EXISTING flag.
When opening a volume or floppy disk, the dwShareMode parameter must have the FILE_SHARE_WRITE flag.
When opening a physical drive x, the lpFileName string should be the following form: \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE<x>. Hard disk numbers start at 0 (zero). The following table shows some examples of physical drive strings.
String Meaning
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 Opens the first physical drive.
\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 Opens the third physical drive.
For an example of opening a physical drive, see Calling DeviceIoControl.
When opening a volume or floppy drive, the lpFileName string should be the following form: \\.\<x>:. Do not use a trailing backslash, which indicates the root directory of a drive. The following table shows some examples of drive strings.
String Meaning
\\.\A: Opens drive A (floppy drive).
\\.\C: Opens drive C (volume).
You can also open a volume by referring to its volume name. For more information, see Naming a Volume.
Volume handles can be opened as noncached at the discretion of the file system, even when the noncached option is not specified in CreateFile. You should assume that all Microsoft file systems open volume handles as noncached. The restrictions on noncached I/O for files also apply to volumes.
A file system may or may not require buffer alignment even though the data is noncached. However, if the noncached option is specified when opening a volume, buffer alignment is enforced regardless of the file system on the volume. It is recommended on all file systems that you open volume handles as noncached, and follow the noncached I/O restrictions.
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