Storage Manager
A store is a stream device that a block driver exports. The store can be a hard drive, CD-ROM, Compact Flash storage card, or any other media. The Storage Manager consists of the Block Driver Manager, Partition Manager, and File System Driver (FSD) Manager. The Storage Manager is responsible for all external storage items, including all the file systems and block drivers. All file, data, and volume manipulation goes through the Storage Manager. Therefore, the Storage Manager acts as a central location for all I/O to the disk or other permanent storage medium. Because all disk related I/O must travel through the layers of Storage Manager, the layers filter the disk I/O. They trap any call and perform encryption, compression, and virus scanning before disk I/O gets to the appropriate file system. Then, the file system sends commands to the Partition Manager, or directly down to the block drivers for execution. You can call DeviceIoControl on an hStore or hPartition that gets returned from other APIs that causes an IOCTL to be sent directly to the block driver.
Set the SYSGEN_STOREMGR environment variable to enable the Storage Manager. To manipulate storage devices, use the Storage Manager Control Panel application.
The following table shows the Storage Manager functions.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| CreatePartition | Creates the store. |
| CreatePartitionEx | Creates the store. |
| DeletePartition | Deletes a partition from the store. You can only delete a non-mounted partition. |
| DismountPartition | Dismounts the partition and the file system residing on top of it. |
| DismountStore | Dismounts all file systems mounted on a store. |
| FindClosePartition | Closes the partition search handle. |
| FindCloseStore | Closes the store search handle. |
| FindFirstPartition | Finds the first partition on the store. |
| FindFirstStore | Finds the first store registered in the system. |
| FindNextPartition | Continues a partition search from a previous call to the FindFirstPartition function. |
| FindNextStore | Finds the next store registered in the system. |
| FormatPartition | Formats the partition with the default file system of the loaded partition driver. |
| FormatPartitionEx | Formats the partition with the default file system of the loaded partition driver. |
| FormatStore | Performs a clean format of the storage volume. This removes all partitioning information in the store. |
| GetPartitionInfo | Gets information on the partition. |
| GetStoreInfo | Gets information about the store. |
| MountPartition | Mounts the partition by loading a file system on top of it. |
| OpenPartition | Opens a partition and returns a handle to the partition. |
| OpenStore | Opens the storage volume. |
| RenamePartition | Renames the partition. |
| SetPartitionAttributes | Sets the attributes for the partition. |
See Also
Storage Manager Architecture | Hive-Based Registry | File System Filters | Partition Driver | Partition Manager
Last updated on Wednesday, April 13, 2005
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