Re: Writing File System Driver & Creating Virtual Disk Drive in Windows XP [Question by a Novice]

Yup, may be it is very difficult to do this type of *Fully functional*
project for
newbies like us. [We are group of 3 students.]

But,
even if we can create a prototype for this concept,
then it will be very good achievement for us.

Our minimal goals are
1. Able to give only *read* access to say Reiser file system
2. Try to show these reiserFS partitions in windows explorer for easy
browsing

*****What we have now
1. We already have coded file system recogniser [by reading partition
tables n then magic strings-- this required Raw access to HDD]
2. Coding for ReiserFS read i.e. traversing ReiserFS tree, retrieving
data from direct and indirect items is under progress and we will
complete in coming 10 to 15 days.

****What we dont know
1. how to show those reiserFS partitions in Windows Explorer?
2. even if we show reiserFS partition in windows explorer as a drive,
how our read call will be called when user tries to browse through this
drive?
3. thus the main question is what should we do in order to achieve
above result?
***How to show partitions in windows explorer?
***Do we have to write a file system driver to interface our read call,
with windows explorer clicks?

Please share any links/ name of books you have, which will help in
such kind of activities.

Many thanks to Skywing for Commenting on this topic. :-)
_______________________________________________________________________
Skywing [MVP] wrote:
Full-blown filesystem drivers are extremely complicated and involve a lot of
subtleties relating to getting things like locking and right with the rest
of the system. I would not recommend it as a first project for someone new
to Windows kernel programming.

--
Ken Johnson (Skywing)
Windows SDK MVP
http://www.nynaeve.net
"Ashish13" <ashishbagate13@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1168195001.753632.308120@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,

I am new to Windows Device Drivers/Internals.


We (a group of friends) want to do a project for windows XP, which can
be summarised as follows


1. When our code will run, it will identify all the hard-disk
partitions, and will detect the file systems in the each partition
2. After that, for ReiserFS partitions, ( virtual ) drives [like C: D:
etc.] will be created, which can be seen in Windows Explorer.
3. When user will double click on this drive or directories/files in
this drive a reiserfs-read-call [coded by us in this utility] will be
called to read the contents of the directory/files.


Thus an user can browse ReiserFS (a linux file system) from Windows XP
in windows explorer.


*** So Question is How To proceed about writing such kind of File
System Driver?
*** How much time will be required to code such a driver?


Please help, suggest some links because we all are new to this type of
work.


Thanking You and Hoping for reply,
Ashish


.

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