Reading raw data from disc

[Ivo Woltring]

Dear Pythoneers,

Is it possible to read e.g. the first 3 sectors of a disc without opening a
file or somesuch?
I want to bitwise read a cd-rom or other media without consulting a table of
contents. Just start at track 0 and go on for x bytes. Is it possible with
python and if so, please help me in the right direction

thankx
Ivo.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Is it possible to read e.g. the first 3 sectors of a disc
without opening a file or somesuch?

Under Linux, no.

You have to open the device.

I want to bitwise read a cd-rom or other media without
consulting a table of contents. Just start at track 0 and go
on for x bytes. Is it possible with python and if so, please
help me in the right direction

sectorsize = 2048 # hard drives are usually 512, CDs 2K or 4K
bytes = file('/dev/cdrom','rb').read(3*sectorsize)

I've no idea what to do under Windows...