Installable File System Mechanism
The OS/2 Installable File System (IFS) Mechanism supports the following:
- Coexistence of multiple, active file systems in a single PC
- Multiple logical volumes (partitions)
- Multiple and different storage devices
- Redirection or connection to remote file systems
- File system flexibility in managing its data and I/O for optimal performance
- Transparency at both the user and application level
- Standard set of File I/O API
- Existing logical file and directory structure
- Existing naming conventions
- File system doing its own buffer management
- File system doing file I/O without intermediate buffering
- Extensions to the Standard File I/O API (FSCTL)
- Extensions to the existing naming conventions
- IOCTL type of communication between a file system and a device driver