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Storage Management

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Windows Mobile Not SupportedWindows Embedded CE Supported

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

CreatePartition

Creates the store.

CreatePartitionEx

Creates the store.

DeletePartition

Deletes a partition from the store. You can delete only non-mounted partitions.

DismountPartition

Dismounts the partition and the file system residing in it.

DismountStore

Dismounts all file systems mounted in a store.

FindClosePartition

Closes the partition search handle.

FindCloseStore

Closes the store search handle.

FindFirstPartition

Finds the first partition in 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

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