Windows C# implementation of linux dd command

I'm writing a C#.Net app to run on windows that needs to take an image of a removable disk and chuck it onto a Linux Live USB. The Live USB is the inserted into the target machine and boots, on start up it runs a script which uses the dd command like so to flash it onto another drive:

dd if=/path/to/file/from/csharp/program of=/dev/sdX

The problem I am having is creating the image on the windows side. I have tried my Live Linux out with files I have created on a Linux system using dd and that works fine, but I need to be able to create these files from within a C#.Net application on Windows. I'd rather not have to rely on cygwin or some other dependency so tried to use the Win32 CreateFile function to open the physical device.

CreateFile is called with the first arg set to "\.\F:" (if F: is the drive I want to image), like so:

SafeFileHandle TheDevice = CreateFile(_DevicePath, (uint)FileAccess.Read, (uint)(FileShare.Write | FileShare.Read | FileShare.Delete), IntPtr.Zero, (uint)FileMode.Open, (uint)FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM | FILE_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL_SCAN, IntPtr.Zero);
if (TheDevice.IsInvalid) 
{ 
    throw new IOException("Unable to access drive. Win32 Error Code " + Marshal.GetLastWin32Error()); 
}
FileStream Dest = System.IO.File.Open(_SaveFile, FileMode.Create);
FileStream Src = new FileStream(TheDevice, FileAccess.Read);
Src.CopyTo(Dest);
Dest.Flush();
Src.Close();
Dest.Close();

But when the output file is dd'd back onto a disk using the Live Linux USB the result is not as expected (the disk isn't bootable etc, but from examining the output file in a hex editor, it looks like there is an MBR at the beginning etc).

Is this a problem with endianess or should I using something other than a FileStream to copy the data into the file.

Alternatively is there an example of dd for Windows source code (C# or C++, i've looked at the Delphi for c# winapi wmi

Edit Report

This is what i've written to do get the \.\PhysicalDriveX path for a given drive letter. If Pass the drive letter into this and take the return value and pass into CreateFile as the first Param I should now get something similar to dd under Linux.

using System.Management; //Add in a reference to this as well in the project settings
public static string GetPhysicalDevicePath(char DriveLetter)
{
    ManagementClass devs = new ManagementClass( @"Win32_Diskdrive");
    {
        ManagementObjectCollection moc = devs.GetInstances();
        foreach(ManagementObject mo in moc)
        {
            foreach (ManagementObject b in mo.GetRelated("Win32_DiskPartition"))
            {
                foreach (ManagementBaseObject c in b.GetRelated("Win32_LogicalDisk"))
                {
                    string DevName = string.Format("{0}", c["Name"]);
                    if (DevName[0] == DriveLetter)
                        return string.Format("{0}", mo["DeviceId"]); 
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return "";
}

answered 2011-08-18T11:06:56.800

Windows C# implementation of linux dd command

1 Answer

Your Answer