I need to format a disk under NT/2000/XP and I use this code, which obviously doesn't work!

DISK_GEOMETRY dg;
FORMAT_PARAMETERS fp;
HANDLE hDevice;

hDevice = CreateFile("\\\\.\\A:", GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ |
  FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, NULL);

DeviceIoControl(hDevice, IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY, NULL, 0, &dg,
  sizeof(DISK_GEOMETRY), &bytes, NULL);

DeviceIoControl(hDevice, FSCTL_LOCK_VOLUME, NULL, 0, NULL, 0,
  &bytes, NULL);

fp.MediaType = dg.MediaType;
fp.StartHeadNumber = 0;
fp.EndHeadNumber = dg.TracksPerCylinder - 1;

for (UINT i=0; i<dg.Cylinders.LowPart; i++)
    {
    fp.StartCylinderNumber = fp.EndCylinderNumber = i;
    if (!DeviceIoControl(hDevice, IOCTL_DISK_FORMAT_TRACKS, &fp, 
	sizeof(FORMAT_PARAMETERS), NULL, 0, &bytes, NULL))
	{
	DeviceIoControl(hDevice, FSCTL_UNLOCK_VOLUME, NULL, 0, NULL, 
	  0, &bytes, NULL);
	CloseHandle(hDevice);
	Error("Format error"); // This is just a routine that pop-ups a msgbox
	return -1;
	}

DeviceIoControl(hDevice, FSCTL_UNLOCK_VOLUME, NULL, 0, NULL, 
  0, &bytes, NULL);
CloseHandle(hDevice);
MessageBox(hWnd, "Format complete.", "Info", MB_OK | MB_ICONINFORMATION);

The error is given by DeviceIoControl, with IOCTL_FORMAT_TRACKS, and GetLastError returns 5, that is "Access denied"...

Where's the error???

Thanks in advance
nICO

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How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty itself.
JOHN KEATS

Only the system can have access to such hardware for such a purpose. NT, 2000, and XP are all based on NT. They have a hareware abstraction layer that isolates the hardware from the user in a way that only the OS can access it. I don't know how to tell you to access such a service in these to work. I've never seen any other software able to format a HDD under these other than the OS itself.

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When it came down to it I dropped everything and ran.
-Ramza Final Fantasy Tactics

No, you can easily low-level access the disks for reading or writing, is not difficult.
I found the error, it was just the handle to the device. In fact it was only opened in reading mode and not also in writing.

nICO

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How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty itself.
JOHN KEATS