CreateFile: direct write operation to raw disk “Access is denied” – Vista, Win7

While the answer of @MSalters makes sense, it is not how my code works. In fact it is so counter-intuitive, I spent several days making sure the code does in fact work.

These code snippets are in a proven, mass consumer market software product. When it needs to modify an on-disk structure, it dismounts the win32 volume so it can modify NTFS or FAT filesystem structures. Interestingly, the volume access handle is read-only:

    char    fn [30];
    snprintf (fn, sizeof fn, "\\\\.\\%s:", vol -> GetVolName ());

    vol_handle = CreateFile (fn, GENERIC_READ,
                            FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL,
                            OPEN_EXISTING,
                            FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING | FILE_FLAG_RANDOM_ACCESS,
                            NULL);

    if (vol_handle == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
    {
          // show error message and exit
    }

If unable to get write access to a volume or partition, this code forces a dismount if the user authorizes such after a stern warning:

if (!DeviceIoControl (vol_handle, FSCTL_DISMOUNT_VOLUME,
                                            NULL, 0, NULL, 0, &status, NULL))
{
    DWORD err = GetLastError ();
    errormsg ("Error %d attempting to dismount volume: %s",
                                                        err, w32errtxt (err));
}

// lock volume
if (!DeviceIoControl (vol_handle, FSCTL_LOCK_VOLUME,
                                            NULL, 0, NULL, 0, &status, NULL))
{
     // error handling; not sure if retrying is useful
}

Writing is then fairly straightforward, except for positioning the file pointer by 512-byte sector:

    long    hipart = sect >> (32-9);
    long    lopart = sect << 9;
    long    err;

    SetLastError (0);       // needed before SetFilePointer post err detection
    lopart = SetFilePointer (vol_handle, lopart, &hipart, FILE_BEGIN);

    if (lopart == -1  &&  NO_ERROR != (err = GetLastError ()))
    {
            errormsg ("HWWrite: error %d seeking drive %x sector %ld:  %s",
                            err, drive, sect, w32errtxt (err));
            return false;
    }

    DWORD   n;

    if (!WriteFile (vol_handle, buf, num_sects*512, &n, NULL))
    {
            err = GetLastError ();
            errormsg ("WriteFile: error %d writing drive %x sectors %lu..%lu:  %s",
                            err, drv, sect, sect + num_sects - 1,
                            w32errtxt (err));
            return false;
    }