Write a C program to read the contents of Boot Sector of a 32- bit FAT file system and print them on the screen
Here is a sample C program that reads the boot sector of a 32-bit FAT file system and prints the contents on the screen:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <windows.h>
#define SECTOR_SIZE 512 // size of a sector in bytes
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
HANDLE hDevice; // handle to the device
char* device = "\\\\.\\PhysicalDrive0"; // name of the device (e.g. "\\.\PhysicalDrive0")
char buffer[SECTOR_SIZE]; // buffer to hold the boot sector data
DWORD bytesRead; // number of bytes read from the device
// open the device
hDevice = CreateFile(device, GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, NULL);
if (hDevice == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
{
printf("Error opening device: %d\n", GetLastError());
return 1;
}
// read the boot sector
if (!ReadFile(hDevice, buffer, SECTOR_SIZE, &bytesRead, NULL))
{
printf("Error reading boot sector: %d\n", GetLastError());
CloseHandle(hDevice);
return 1;
}
// close the device
CloseHandle(hDevice);
// print the boot sector data
printf("Boot sector data:\n");
for (int i = 0; i < SECTOR_SIZE; i++)
{
printf("%02x ", buffer[i]);
if ((i + 1) % 16 == 0)
{
printf("\n");
}
}
return 0;
}
This program uses the Windows API function CreateFile
to open the device, ReadFile
to read the boot sector, and CloseHandle
to close the device. It also defines a macro SECTOR_SIZE
with the size of a sector in bytes and uses a loop to print the contents of the boot sector in hexadecimal format.
To use this program, we will need to specify the name of the device we want to read from in the device
variable (e.g. “\\.\PhysicalDrive0” for the first physical drive). We can also specify a different sector size if needed.
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