Getting Partition Info Without Handle To Disk or Volume

NTDEV
1

Howdy folks,

I’m trying to get the Drive Signature (not to be confused with a volume’s serial number as returned from GetVolumeInformation) and Starting Offset of a partition from user mode. I know how to do this sending an IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT via DeviceIoControl to the disk. Unfortunately, this requires a volume handle which you can only obtain if you’re running under an administrative account. For security reasons, this is unacceptable in our application. Does anyone know a way to obtain this same information from a non administrative account?

Cheers,
Ishan Anand

2

Getting Partition Info Without Handle To Disk or Volume No.
This is considered to be security-sensitive stuff by MS, and getting it requires administrative rights, period.

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Ishan Anand
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 5:07 AM
Subject: [ntdev] Getting Partition Info Without Handle To Disk or Volume

Howdy folks,

I’m trying to get the Drive Signature (not to be confused with a volume’s serial number as returned from GetVolumeInformation) and Starting Offset of a partition from user mode. I know how to do this sending an IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT via DeviceIoControl to the disk. Unfortunately, this requires a volume handle which you can only obtain if you’re running under an administrative account. For security reasons, this is unacceptable in our application. Does anyone know a way to obtain this same information from a non administrative account?

Cheers,
Ishan Anand

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@storagecraft.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

3

Well, you could write a service to do it (or a device driver, but that’s
massive overkill)… it would still need to be installed by an
administrator, but the user wouldn’t have to have admin priviledges.

However, Prokash’s statement should be considered too. I’m not sure why
MS would consider the drive signature to be security sensitive, but it’s
entirely plausible that there’s a reason it is…

Just curious… why do you want to do this?

Ishan Anand wrote:

Howdy folks,

I’m trying to get the Drive Signature (not to be confused with a
volume’s serial number as returned from GetVolumeInformation) and
Starting Offset of a partition from user mode. I know how to do this
sending an IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_LAYOUT via DeviceIoControl to the disk.
Unfortunately, this requires a volume handle which you can only obtain
if you’re running under an administrative account. For security reasons,
this is unacceptable in our application. Does anyone know a way to
obtain this same information from a non administrative account?

Cheers,
Ishan Anand

–
…/ray..

4

Ray, the stmt. is from Max, and it is correct (needless to say !). And your idea would work too. :slight_smile:

-pro

5

This confirms what I had suspected. My thanks to everyone who replied for your help.

Ishan

-----Original Message-----
From: Programmers Society Prokash Sinha [mailto:xxxxx@garlic.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 1:08 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntdev] Getting Partition Info Without Handle To Disk or
Volume

Ray, the stmt. is from Max, and it is correct (needless to say !). And your idea would work too. :slight_smile:

-pro

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

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