Block Driver Architecture (Windows Embedded CE 6.0)

1/6/2010

Drivers for block devices generally expose the stream interface, and the block devices appear as ordinary disk drives. Applications access files on a block device through standard file APIs such as CreateFile and ReadFile.

The application calls the ReadFile function using a handle to a file that is stored on the block device.

The FAT file system for example, translates the read request to logical blocks. The FAT file system searches the buffer cache for the requested blocks. If these are not present, it issues an IOControl request to the corresponding block device driver to read bytes from the block device. Then, the block device driver receives the IOControl request, and then fulfills the request by accessing the block device through one of its low-level interfaces.

See Also

Concepts

Block Driver Development Concepts
Block Driver Samples
Block Driver Registry Settings
Block Driver Manager
Block Device File Systems
File System Loading and Unloading
Block Driver Interface
Block Driver Loading
Block Driver Installation
Block Driver Detection
Block Driver Access
Block Driver Power Cycle

Other Resources

Block Drivers
File Systems