Diskless System

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A diskless system is a device that contains no physical, rotating hard disk drive media, for example, hard disk emulator technology that uses nonvolatile memory. However, a diskless system might contain a removable storage device other than a hard disk, such as a floppy disk drive or a CD-ROM drive.

A diskless system can boot from the following file system sources:

  • A storage device that does not have physically rotating media, but instead uses flash memory or battery-backed RAM.
  • A bootable CD-ROM that uses the Windows XP Embedded Enhanced Write Filter (EWF).
  • A file system that is accessible through a network connection, for example, a system that boots from a file system in a remote location.
  • ROM-based storage.

The hardware configuration, writable storage capacity, and speed of the storage device are used to determine whether a diskless system can accommodate a pagefile. For information about the paging file, see Configuring the System Pagefile of a Run-Time Image.

See Also

Enhanced Write Filter | Volatile and Nonvolatile Storage Devices | How to Create a Bootable CD-ROM | How to Configure EWF for CompactFlash | Design a Run-Time Image

Last updated on Wednesday, October 18, 2006

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