This could be interesting, since some people considered the NTFS file system for Linux to be news. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 22 Apr 1996 15:17:04 -0700 From: mark eugene russinovich <mer@cs.uoregon.edu> To: comp-os-ms-windows-announce@uunet.uu.net Subject: NTFS Support for DOS/Win3.x,95 We are releasing our first version of NTFSDOS, a DOS/Windows NTFS disk recognizer, today at Andrew Schulman's web site: ftp://ftp.ora.com/windows/pub/examples/win95.update/schulman.html In addition, the executable has been posted to: comp.binaries.ms-windows Below is the README that accompanies the executable. ====================================================================== NTFS File System Redirector for DOS/Windows V0.9 (read-only) Copyright (C) 1996 Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell ====================================================================== NTFSDOS.EXE is a network file system redirecter for DOS/Windows that is able to recognize and mount NTFS drives for transparent access. It makes NTFS drives appear virtually indistinguishable from standard FAT drives, providing the ability to navigate, view and execute programs on them from DOS or from Windows, including from the Windows 3.1 File Manager and Windows 95 Explorer. Here is sample output from an NTFSDOS session under DOS 7.0 (Windows 95): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- C:\ntfsdos>ntfsdos NTFS File System Redirector for DOS/Windows V0.9 (read-only) Copyright (C) 1996 Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell Initialized 512KB of EMS cache. Mounting NTFS partition(0x80:3) as drive: H C:\ntfsdos>h: H:\>dir Volume in drive H is ntfs Directory of H:\ ctrl2cap <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p dblscan <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p filemon <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p flush <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p new <DIR> 04-08-96 5:35p NEWFILE 9 04-18-96 4:31p record <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p vcmon <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p vsd <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p vxdmon <DIR> 04-09-96 3:15p winnt <DIR> 04-19-96 9:02a 1 file(s) 9 bytes 10 dir(s) 79,872 bytes free H:\> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Installation and Use -------------------- To use NTFSDOS, simply execute it from the DOS command line (DOS 5.0 or greater is required). Executing NTFSDOS before Windows is started will create logical drives that are visible globally once inside Windows. Executing NTFSDOS in a DOS box means that the NTFS drives only exist within the DOS box where NTFSDOS was executed. When NTFSDOS starts, it will scan all hard-disk parititions on your system to look for NTFS drives. It will mount all NTFS drives it finds as unique DOS logical drive letters, and will inform you as it does so. NTFSDOS implements its own caching, and uses one of two types of memory, depending on how your system is configured. Its first choice is to use EMS memory for caching, as this minimizes demands placed on conventional memory. If you start NTFSDOS before Windows, then HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE (without the /NOEMS option), both of which can be found in the WINDOWS directory under Windows 95 or the DOS directory under Windows 3.1, or their equivalents, must be started before NTFSDOS. If NTFSDOS does not detect an EMS server, it will resort to allocating 64KB of conventional memory for its cache. In either case, it will inform you of its action. There is currently no way to unload NTFSDOS from memory once it has started. Notes on Usage -------------- NTFSDOS is being released with no known bugs, although it does currently have some shortcomings, most of which we hope to solve for a next release: - executing some Windows programs on NTFS drives results in messages indicating that some DLL is missing. This error appears to be the result of updates to the network redirecter specification for Windows 95 which are undocumented. Specifically, it appears that INT 2F/1123 (qualify pathname) has changed and must be supported. If you have any information regarding this, please contact us. - modify and access times are not supported (for example when "properties" is selected in the Windows 95 explorer) since their addition to the Windows 95 network redirecter spec is undocumented. NTFSDOS does have this time information available to it, so if you have any knowledge of the redirecter support required to provide it, please let us know. - performance is particularly poor when viewing extremely large directories (that contain hundreds of files) under the Windows 95 explorer. This is due to a blind, sector-base caching scheme. We plan to implement "smart caching" (tm) :-), that adds directory information to the caching scheme. This should improve performance dramatically. - opening some types of documents, for example bitmaps, results in a message from Windows that the document cannot be registered. This again appears to be a side-effect of a changed Windows 95 redirecter interface. Unfortunatley, to view these files you must first copy them to a non-NTFS drive and then open them. If you have any information about this, please contact us. - NTFSDOS does not currently provide long-file name support for its NTFS drives under Windows 95. We are looking into providing this for the next release. Reaching Us ----------- We would appreciate any feedback you have concerning this utility including suggestions and bug reports. Mark can be reached at markr@numega.com, and Bryce can be reached at cogswell@cs.uoregon.edu. Acknowledgements ---------------- Significant understanding of the NTFS file system layout was derived by studying the Linux-based NTFS driver code maintained by Martin von Lowis. We acknowledge his indirect contribution to this endeavor. Andrew Schulman, et. al.'s, book, Undocumented DOS (Addison-Wesley), was invaluable in providing network redirecter information necessary for implementing NTFSDOS.