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Unsupported

Liryna edited this page Sep 27, 2021 · 21 revisions

Unsupported driver features

  • FSCTL

Unsupported operating systems

  • Windows Vista Compatible with Dokan version <= 0.6.0
  • Windows XP Compatible with Dokan version <= 0.6.0
  • Windows 2000

Alternatives

If anything above is critical for your project then you have only three solutions:

  • Wait for it, if you can. Ensure that the feature is already requested on issue tracker and watch it's progress.
  • Do it yourself. From our perspective that's the best option, because it will help everyone. However you will need some additional time and knowledge. Once complete don't forget to create a new pull request.
  • Look for alternatives. That's hard to say but sometimes you don't have the choice. Dokan is the only free, open source and maintained user mode file system driver library for Windows. However few technical tricks and commercial products exist, listed below.
Name Comments
MiniFilter File System Driver Are you sure you need a File System Device Driver? Maybe MiniFilter introduced since Windows XP SP3 is enough for you. This still requires some additional work compared to Dokan but it could be a viable official alternative from Microsoft.
Network Mini-Redirector (This need more research) Network Mini-Redirector will only make you able to create a network device for remote files. Create a Network Mini-Redirector will require kernel knowledge compared to dokan.
Shell Namespace Extension This has nothing to do with a file system but if you end up looking at alternatives then maybe you don't need a file system. Shell Namespace Extension only works on Windows Explorer but gives you good control over the view and content of a virtual folder.
WebDAV This is definitely tricky but it works nicely, specifically if you're targeting a network drive. Instead of creating a file system driver, create a new WebDAV server. Most operating systems including Windows have native support for WebDAV. The davfuse project provides a FUSE-compatible library for doing exactly that.
Pismo File Mount A company developing Virtual file system related software and providing user mode FS core features as a free (not open source) sdk. They're not communicating much but they keep it up to date.
Callback File System Dokan and CBFS are frequently compared. EldoS company is not always playing fair play against Dokan (misleading Dokan/CBFS comparison, aggressive marketing communication, Dokan thread hijack..) but that's the game and few years of Dokan inactivity didn't help. Their product is quite good otherwise and they offer a large environment in addition to basic device driver api. License cost is few thousand of $$$ (they used to provide discount and sometimes free license for open source projects). See also migrating from CBFS to Dokan.
OSR FSDK Windows File System Development Kit from OSR gurus which also provide a way to develop user-mode file systems. Not free and no public price, you need to contact them and talk about your project.

Early 2000, few projects (dead today) attempted to achieve file system driver development in user mode listed bellow for history: