NTFS File System Driver

As described in Chapter 8, in the framework of the Windows I/O system, NTFS and other file systems are loadable device drivers that run in kernel mode. They are invoked indirectly by applications that use Windows or other I/O APIs (such as POSIX). As Figure 12-23 shows, the Windows environment subsystems call Windows system services, which in turn locate the appropriate loaded drivers and call them. (For a description of system service dispatching, see the section “System Service Dispatching” in Chapter 3 in Part 1.)

Components of the Windows I/O system

Figure 12-23. Components of the Windows I/O system

The layered drivers pass I/O requests to one another by calling ...

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