DISKFILE.SYS

NOTE: DISKFILE dates from 1998. It is kept up for historical reasons only, but probably doesn't work with any current Windows machine. There are tons of better RamDIsk options these days.

DISKFILE.SYS provides you with a NTFS-Formatted harddisk, and can possibly contain a predefined directory structure. You can use it

It is sort-of reset safe: it includes a tool named "pdisk" which you can use to generate a dump of the current file structure to be used the next time your machine uses. (A better explanation hopefully below)

Download

The current version number is 1.0. It is released as freeware, without any license attached. Use at own risk. Download here (84.298 bytes).

WARNING: DISKFILE.SYS is a Windows NT kernel driver. It is not for weak stomachs, faint of hearts. It may crash. It may loose your data. It may smell funny. Whatever it does - I have warned you ;)

Installation

Unfortunately, installation is a bit tricky. Bear with me.

1.) Extract the files from diskfile.zip. You should get three files: diskfile.sys, diskfile.reg and pdisk.exe.

2.) Copy diskfile.sys to c:\winnt\system32\drivers.

3.) Copy pdisk.exe somewhere on your system path, e.g c:\winnt.

4.) Edit diskfile.reg to suit your needs. It should look like this:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DiskFile]
"Type"=dword:00000001
"Start"=dword:00000003
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000002
"Group"="Primary disk"
"DisplayName"="DiskFile"
"Description"=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DiskFile\Parameters]
"BreakOnEntry"=dword:00000000
"DebugLevel"=dword:00000000
"DiskSize"=dword:01000000
"DriveLetter"="Z:"
"RootDirEntries"=dword:00000200
"SectorsPerCluster"=dword:00000002

The parameters "DiskSize" and "DriveLetter" should be obvious. The default size as shown here is 16 Megabytes. Beware, the actual free size on disk will be less - NTFS needs A LOT of disk space for its management data.

5.) Doubleclick diskfile.reg to merge the settings into the registry.

6.) Reboot.

7.) After you have rebooted, diskfile.sys is not yet started. The startup mode is set to "manual", giving you a chance to survive if the first run of diskfile.sys fails. If you're confident diskfile.sys works for you, you can always change the startup type to "automatic". (You can do so manually in the registry by setting "Start"=DWORD:0000002). Type

net start diskfile

to actually start diskfile.sys.

8.) You should now have a drive z:\. Format it using

format z: /fs:ntfs

If you wish, you can create a default directory structure in it, and even copy files in it that you wish to see every time you start diskfile.sys

9.) Once you're finished with step 8, type

pdisk

This will create a file called DISKFILE.DAT in your \winnt\system32 directory containing the NTFS directory structure, and the default data. Note that the file is 16M large. At this point, decide either to keep starting diskfile.sys manually, or to change its startup type to automatic.

10.) Have fun.