BlockIO – Low-Level Disk Access for C# on Windows

BlockIO is a C# library that fills a critical gap in the Windows ecosystem: it enables direct, low-level access to physical disks and partitions — without relying on filesystem APIs or unsafe native code. Inspired by Linux tools like dd, partx, and blkid, BlockIO gives .NET developers structured, introspectable control over block devices.

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🧩 Purpose

Windows lacks a clean, managed way to access raw disk sectors, GPT/MBR headers, and partition boundaries. BlockIO solves this by offering:

• Safe, stream-based access to physical disks and partitions
• GPT and MBR parsing without filesystem dependency
• Partition introspection via GUID, name, or index
• Device abstraction for RAM, files, USB, and virtual disks
• Compression-ready containers for snapshots and transfer

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🔧 Core Components

📦 Devices

• AbstractDevice – base class for all device types
• FileDevice, RamDevice, UsbDevice, VirtualDiskDevice
• CreateDeviceStream() for raw access
• GetPartitionById, GetPartitionByGuid, GetPartitionByName

🧱 Partitions

• AbstractPartition – holds LBA range, GUID, name
• CreateStream() – returns a bounded stream over the partition
• No filesystem logic — structure only

🔄 Streams

• PartitionStream, DeviceStream
• Access variants:
  • ReadOnlyPartitionStream
  • WritePartitionStream
  • RWPartitionStream
  • Same for device-level streams
• All implement IBlockStream with:

  Stream CloneAsReadOnly();
  Stream CloneAsWriteOnly();
  Stream CloneAsReadWrite();