Storage Management
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8/28/2008
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.
Storage Manager handles all external storage items, including all file systems and block drivers. All file, data, and volume manipulation goes through Storage Manager. Storage Manager uses three major elements: Block Driver Manager, Partition Manager, and File System Driver (FSD) Manager.
Storage Manager acts as a central manager 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. The layers trap any calls and perform encryption, compression, and virus scanning before disk I/O gets to the appropriate file system. Then, the file system sends commands to Partition Manager, or directly to the block drivers to be run. You can call DeviceIoControl on an hStore or hPartition that is returned from other APIs that causes an I/O control to be sent directly to the block driver.
To enable Storage Manager, set the SYSGEN_STOREMGR environment variable.
To manipulate storage devices, use the Storage Manager Control Panel application.
The following table shows Storage Manager functions.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
Creates the store. |
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Creates the store. |
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Deletes a partition from the store. You can delete only non-mounted partitions. |
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Dismounts the partition and the file system residing in it. |
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Dismounts all file systems mounted in a store. |
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Closes the partition search handle. |
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Closes the store search handle. |
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Finds the first partition in the store. |
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Finds the first store registered in the system. |
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Continues a partition search from a previous call to the FindFirstPartition function. |
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Finds the next store registered in the system. |
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Formats the partition with the default file system of the loaded partition driver. |
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Formats the partition with the default file system of the loaded partition driver. |
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Performs a clean format of the storage volume. This removes all partitioning information in the store. |
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Gets information on the partition. |
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Gets information about the store. |
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Mounts the partition by loading a file system on top of it. |
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Opens a partition and returns a handle to the partition. |
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Opens the storage volume. |
|
Renames the partition. |
|
Sets the attributes for the partition. |
See Also
Concepts
File Systems and Storage Management Catalog Items
Storage Manager Architecture
Storage Manager Loading Process
Storage Manager Registry Settings
Hive-Based Registry
File System Filters
Partition Manager
Partition Driver