reading/writing files from mounted device directly

Hello,

            I am developing a product for the Macintosh platform that requires I read and write files from a mounted device. Information on the mounted device is being updated in real time but I am unable to detect the changes due to the operating system (Darwin?) caching the contents of the device into a buffer which remains static until I unmount the drive with a “diskutil unmount” command. Continually mounting and unmounting the device to see changes in a file is not desirable.

            Using the IOKit to obtain a handle to the device and then using POSIX funtions to open/read/write does allow access to the raw disk, but I can only access bytes. Reading the entire device and programmatically reproducing the file structure to locate the file I am interested in reading is prohibitive. Changing a file and writing the entire contents of the drive back into it would take 30 seconds or more, also bad. I need a way to read and write to the file system on the mounted device not just access the bytes.

 

            Is there a no-cache option on mounting what is effectively a USB storage device? Or how do I bypass the cached buffer?

 

            Please let me know if there is a more appropriate forum for asking this question.

 

Thank you for your time,

Dave Hackenyos

email@hidden  

 

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