Calling DeviceIoControl
An application can use the DeviceIoControl function to perform direct input and output operations on, or retrieve information about, a floppy disk drive, hard disk drive, tape drive, or CD-ROM drive. The following example demonstrates how to retrieve information about the first physical drive in the system. It uses the CreateFile function to retrieve the device handle to the first physical drive, and then uses DeviceIoControl with the IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY control code to fill a DISK_GEOMETRY structure with information about the drive.
/* The code of interest is in the subroutine GetDriveGeometry. The
code in main shows how to interpret the results of the IOCTL call. */
#include <windows.h>
#include <winioctl.h>
BOOL GetDriveGeometry(DISK_GEOMETRY *pdg)
{
HANDLE hDevice; // handle to the drive to be examined
BOOL bResult; // results flag
DWORD junk; // discard results
hDevice = CreateFile("\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive0", // drive to open
0, // no access to the drive
FILE_SHARE_READ | // share mode
FILE_SHARE_WRITE,
NULL, // default security attributes
OPEN_EXISTING, // disposition
0, // file attributes
NULL); // do not copy file attributes
if (hDevice == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) // cannot open the drive
{
return (FALSE);
}
bResult = DeviceIoControl(hDevice, // device to be queried
IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY, // operation to perform
NULL, 0, // no input buffer
pdg, sizeof(*pdg), // output buffer
&junk, // # bytes returned
(LPOVERLAPPED) NULL); // synchronous I/O
CloseHandle(hDevice);
return (bResult);
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
DISK_GEOMETRY pdg; // disk drive geometry structure
BOOL bResult; // generic results flag
ULONGLONG DiskSize; // size of the drive, in bytes
bResult = GetDriveGeometry (&pdg);
if (bResult)
{
printf("Cylinders = %I64d\n", pdg.Cylinders);
printf("Tracks per cylinder = %ld\n", (ULONG) pdg.TracksPerCylinder);
printf("Sectors per track = %ld\n", (ULONG) pdg.SectorsPerTrack);
printf("Bytes per sector = %ld\n", (ULONG) pdg.BytesPerSector);
DiskSize = pdg.Cylinders.QuadPart * (ULONG)pdg.TracksPerCylinder *
(ULONG)pdg.SectorsPerTrack * (ULONG)pdg.BytesPerSector;
printf("Disk size = %I64d (Bytes) = %I64d (Mb)\n", DiskSize,
DiskSize / (1024 * 1024));
}
else
{
printf ("GetDriveGeometry failed. Error %ld.\n", GetLastError ());
}
return ((int)bResult);
}
This example does not work on Windows Me/98/95 for the following reasons:
The standard device input/output control codes are not available.
An application must specify a virtual device driver in the CreateFile function—not a specific device.
Windows Me/98/95: For an example that works on Windows Me/98/95, see Calling DeviceIoControl on Windows Me/98/95.
