Hard Disk (HDD)

Hard drives, Solid state drives, NVMe, etc.

SpecProbe can probe HDD information by calling the HardwareProber.HardDisk property. This populates the following values in accordance to the available information:

Value	Notes
HardDiskSize
PartitionCount
Partitions
PartitionTableType

Each partition in the Partitions list contains the following properties:

Value	Notes
PartitionNumber
PartitionSize
PartitionType
PartitionBootable	Always false on macOS, and only true on Linux if it's an ESP.
PartitionOffset

How parsing works

This section describes how parsing works for the below systems:

Linux

SpecProbe on Linux systems tries to get all the block devices defined in the /sys/block folder. Once the list of block devices are populated (loop devices are not supported), it first checks the contents of the removable file.

If the removable state is zero, which means that it's a fixed drive, SpecProbe attempts to get the total size of the drive by probing the block size of each drive from the size file for each drive. Then, it translates that size to the actual size in bytes by multiplying it by 512. It then tries to figure out the partition table type.

For the partitions, SpecProbe gets the device name and attempts to check the block device name to see if it ends with a number (nvme0n1 for NVMe drives, mmbclk0 for eMMC drives, ...). After that, it assigns the drive number as appropriate. SpecProbe attempts to formulate the correct partition block device name in accordance to the drive number existence (nvme0n1 vs. sda) so that it can check to see if that partition exists.

Then, SpecProbe tries to get the size of a single partition by parsing the contents of the size file from the partition path and multiplying the block size reported by that file by 512 to get the total number of bytes. SpecProbe then uses lsblk to query the partition type and the partition table type, assuming that your system has udev enabled.

To get this information on Android phones and tablets, your device needs to be rooted and SpecProbe needs to be updated to version 1.1.0. Unrooted Android devices only show little to no information.

Windows

For Windows systems, it tries to get the list of all the recognized physical Windows drives, including the unmounted partitions, such as your system reserved partition. Once the drive is ready, SpecProbe formulates the Windows kernel partition path for the next step.

After that, it calls the CreateFile() Windows API function to the formulated partition path to add the resulting drive handle to the list of handles.

Then, SpecProbe attempts to access the DeviceIoControl() function for two things:

• Drive geometry to get access to the Cylinder, Heads, and Sectors (CHS) info

• Device number that gets assigned by the Windows operating system

Then, the hard disk size is calculated by multiplying the four values:

• Cylinders

• Tracks per cylinder (heads)

• Sectors per track (or per head)

• Bytes per sector

Next, SpecProbe tries to get information about the partition table for each disk and type for each partition.

Because of the usage of CreateFile() and the DeviceIoControl() Windows API functions on your drives, you need to run every application that uses SpecProbe to probe your hard drives as an elevated administrator. The console app shipped with SpecProbe sets the requirement of the administrator privileges.

To do this in your application, create an app.manifest file and add this inside the requestedPrivileges list:

<requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false" />

macOS

SpecProbe on macOS systems tries to get all the block devices defined in the /dev folder that their names start with disk. diskutil then gets executed with the full path to the block device, such as /dev/disk0 for the first disk and /dev/disk0s1 for the first partition.

If the Removable Media state is Fixed, which means that it's a fixed drive, SpecProbe attempts to get the total size of the drive by getting the total number of bytes from the Disk Size for physical disks or the Volume Used Space for APFS virtual partitions.

For the partitions, SpecProbe gets the disk ID and the partition number, and checks to see if the disk is one of the known virtual disks. Then, SpecProbe adds the disk or partition to the list. Next, SpecProbe tries to figure out how to parse the partition table and the partition type.