How to make the drive letter invisible for certain drives?

NTDEV
1

Hi everyone,

I have a USB DVD drive. My requirement: when this drive is connected to a
PC, the drive letter should not be visible in explorer or in Disk
Management. There will be a custom user application which will be able to
read/write from this drive and also do playback. The application will have
its own file system. The OS is Windows XP.

What i understand, it is the class driver which provides the drive letter.
So by providing a lower filter driver to class driver (cdrom.sys), and
claiming the device, will make the drive letter invisible. But i have read
in OSR lists that a filter driver cannot claim a device.

Is there any other way? Please help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Best Regards,
Anish

2

Blocking the class driver’s ability to claim the device would also
remove your ability to access it as a disk. If the class driver can’t
load, your custom user application would have to do read/write using
scsi pass-through.

-p

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Anish Nair
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 12:21 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible for certain
drives?

Hi everyone,

I have a USB DVD drive. My requirement: when this drive is connected to
a PC, the drive letter should not be visible in explorer or in Disk
Management. There will be a custom user application which will be able
to read/write from this drive and also do playback. The application
will have its own file system. The OS is Windows XP.

What i understand, it is the class driver which provides the drive
letter.
So by providing a lower filter driver to class driver (cdrom.sys), and
claiming the device, will make the drive letter invisible. But i have
read in OSR lists that a filter driver cannot claim a device.

Is there any other way? Please help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Best Regards,
Anish

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@windows.microsoft.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

3

Use numbers for the drive letters. You can access the drive via
3:\yadayadayada\yadayadayada. You can even park a CMD prompt on it, but
explorer and associated APIS will not enumerate them.

Jamey

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Anish Nair
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 12:21 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible for certain drives?

Hi everyone,

I have a USB DVD drive. My requirement: when this drive is connected to a
PC, the drive letter should not be visible in explorer or in Disk
Management. There will be a custom user application which will be able to
read/write from this drive and also do playback. The application will have
its own file system. The OS is Windows XP.

What i understand, it is the class driver which provides the drive letter.
So by providing a lower filter driver to class driver (cdrom.sys), and
claiming the device, will make the drive letter invisible. But i have read
in OSR lists that a filter driver cannot claim a device.

Is there any other way? Please help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Best Regards,
Anish

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@storagecraft.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

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4

The user application would do the read/write using scsi pass-through.
But how to block the class driver’s ability to claim a particular device.
Can a filter driver (lower filter to class driver) claim the device? Is
there any other better way to do the same?

Suppose I am able to block class driver’s ability to claim my device and
nobody else claims the device. Is it still possible for the user app to
communicate with device using scsi pass-through? If yes, how is the user app
going to get handle to the device? Is this possible through “SetUpDi”
functions?
Will it cause any other issues in USB hot plug in functionality?

Please help.
Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Anish

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Peter Wieland
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 9:04 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible for certain
drives?

Blocking the class driver’s ability to claim the device would also
remove your ability to access it as a disk. If the class driver can’t
load, your custom user application would have to do read/write using
scsi pass-through.

-p

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Anish Nair
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 12:21 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible for certain
drives?

Hi everyone,

I have a USB DVD drive. My requirement: when this drive is connected to
a PC, the drive letter should not be visible in explorer or in Disk
Management. There will be a custom user application which will be able
to read/write from this drive and also do playback. The application
will have its own file system. The OS is Windows XP.

What i understand, it is the class driver which provides the drive
letter.
So by providing a lower filter driver to class driver (cdrom.sys), and
claiming the device, will make the drive letter invisible. But i have
read in OSR lists that a filter driver cannot claim a device.

Is there any other way? Please help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Best Regards,
Anish

5

Hi,
How can I make windows use numbers for drive letters for a particular USB
DVD drive?
Any driver support needed for this.

Thanks in advance,

Best Regards,
Anish

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Jamey Kirby
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 11:35 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible for certain
drives?

Use numbers for the drive letters. You can access the drive via
3:\yadayadayada\yadayadayada. You can even park a CMD prompt on it, but
explorer and associated APIS will not enumerate them.

Jamey

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Anish Nair
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 12:21 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible for certain drives?

Hi everyone,

I have a USB DVD drive. My requirement: when this drive is connected to a
PC, the drive letter should not be visible in explorer or in Disk
Management. There will be a custom user application which will be able to
read/write from this drive and also do playback. The application will have
its own file system. The OS is Windows XP.

What i understand, it is the class driver which provides the drive letter.
So by providing a lower filter driver to class driver (cdrom.sys), and
claiming the device, will make the drive letter invisible. But i have read
in OSR lists that a filter driver cannot claim a device.

Is there any other way? Please help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Best Regards,
Anish

6

Create a device interface and have your application open that path to
communicate with your disk.

I have to wonder what it is you are trying to actually accomplish here.
Originally I thought this was some sort of redundancy scheme, but now it
appears to be something else entirely. If a disk does not have a recognized
file systems on it there won’t be any volumes for it and it can be accessed
using sector read/write operations from the physical disk interface.

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Anish Nair
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 2:17 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible
for certain drives?

The user application would do the read/write using scsi pass-through.
But how to block the class driver’s ability to claim a
particular device.
Can a filter driver (lower filter to class driver) claim the
device? Is there any other better way to do the same?

Suppose I am able to block class driver’s ability to claim my
device and nobody else claims the device. Is it still
possible for the user app to communicate with device using
scsi pass-through? If yes, how is the user app going to get
handle to the device? Is this possible through “SetUpDi”
functions?
Will it cause any other issues in USB hot plug in functionality?

Please help.
Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Anish

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of Peter Wieland
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 9:04 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible
for certain drives?

Blocking the class driver’s ability to claim the device would
also remove your ability to access it as a disk. If the
class driver can’t load, your custom user application would
have to do read/write using scsi pass-through.

-p

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Anish Nair
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 12:21 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] How to make the drive letter invisible for
certain drives?

Hi everyone,

I have a USB DVD drive. My requirement: when this drive is
connected to a PC, the drive letter should not be visible in
explorer or in Disk Management. There will be a custom user
application which will be able to read/write from this drive
and also do playback. The application will have its own file
system. The OS is Windows XP.

What i understand, it is the class driver which provides the
drive letter.
So by providing a lower filter driver to class driver
(cdrom.sys), and claiming the device, will make the drive
letter invisible. But i have read in OSR lists that a filter
driver cannot claim a device.

Is there any other way? Please help.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Best Regards,
Anish

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as:
xxxxx@hollistech.com To unsubscribe send a blank email to
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