Thread: drive masking

  1. #1
    & the hat of GPL slaying Thantos's Avatar
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    drive masking

    I think the answer to my question will be one of two things: No or Yes, but way too much trouble. But anyways:

    What I want to do:
    Write a windows program that can run in the background (does not need to be a service)
    When it is running, take all queries to the A drive and have them go to the F drive.

    Reason:
    A stuipd program for a class I'm taking requires a tracking disk that is hard coded to only access the A: drive. As we all know, floppy disks are not very realiable.

    Anyone know if this would be possible? If so a good starting point because I'm blanking on that.

    Thanks.

  2. #2
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    Yes, but it'll be difficult. The software using the tracking disk will no doubt trying to defeat the kind of software you are attempting to write, so it could be quite difficult to fool it.

    May be far easier to patch the application instead, but that's far beyond the scope of this board, and is most likely not permitted by the software license anyway (then again, the above is likely to be forbidden by the software license too, and you'll be attempting to bypass there implemented software protection scheme)

  3. #3
    Yes, my avatar is stolen anonytmouse's Avatar
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    Its nice when something simple can save someone a thousand hours of work.

    Go into device manager and disable the floppy drive.

    Open a command prompt and type:
    subst A: C:\mypath

    Done! You can probably use a CD but I can't be bothered finding a CD to try.

    To delete:
    subst A: /d
    and reenable the floppy drive.

    I'm sure you can do this progmatically if you really want. The other alternative is to write a low level file system hook. Have a look at sysinternals.

  4. #4
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    Firstly, subst will not work as it's file based, and tracking disks are sector based with no copyable files on them by usual methods (they can be copied by third party apps, but lets not go into that here)

    Secondly, I thought one of the rules of this board was that talk about cracking, warez, etc was not allowed. Asking about, and giving details on bypassing the copy protection on a program certainly comes into that group.

  5. #5
    End Of Line Hammer's Avatar
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    >>I thought one of the rules of this board was that talk about cracking, warez, etc was not allowed.<<
    It is a rule here.

    Thantos, ask the supplier of the software if there's a way round this problem.

    Closed.
    When all else fails, read the instructions.
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