Storage Manager (Windows CE 5.0)

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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 handles all external storage items, including all file systems and block drivers. All file, data, and volume manipulation goes through the Storage Manager. The Storage Manager uses three major elements: the Block Driver Manager, the Partition Manager, and the File System Driver (FSD) Manager.

The 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 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.

To enable the Storage Manager, set the SYSGEN_STOREMGR environment variable.

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

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