Block Device File Systems

Article
06/30/2006

The FAT file system implementation supports block devices. The FAT file system does not read or write to block devices directly; it uses underlying block device drivers for all access to block device hardware. The block device driver must present the block device to the FAT file system as a block-oriented device.

Block device drivers transparently manage or emulate ordinary disk drives, so applications do not need to behave differently when reading and writing files to the block device. The FAT file system provides an abstraction between files in the application name space, such as \Storage Card\Excel Docs\Expense report.pxl, and devices in the device name space, such as DSK1:. The block device driver is responsible for guaranteeing safe I/O operations even when interrupted by a power cycle. The FAT file system accesses the block device by calling the block device driver's XXX_IOControl function with the appropriate I/O control codes. You can also implement additional installable file systems. For more information about installable file systems, see Adding an Installable File System.

Block Device File Systems

See Also

Additional resources