Submission + - How to Write Bits Directly Onto Hard Drive Platter 1
kidcharles writes: I'm working on a project that requires writing bits to a magnetic hard drive platter in a completely controlled fashion. I'd like to be able to control exactly where 1's and 0's will appear physically on a platter. Normally when data is written to a drive the actual bits that get written are determined by the file system being used and also what kind of error handling the drive itself is using (e.g. Reed-Solomon). All of the modern innovations in file systems and error handling are great for reliable and efficient data storage, but they are making my particular task quite daunting. My question for you Slashdotters is how you might approach this problem. Is there a way to get down to the "bare metal" so-to-speak and write these bits? Any good utilities out there to do this? Obviously a free and open source solution would be preferable but I'm open to anything at this point.
