Method and computer system for integrating a compression system with an operating system

摘要

The present invention provides a method in a computer system of integrating a compression system with an operating system. The computer system preferably comprises at least a memory device and one storage device. A user-supplied device driver is provided for storage devices that are not supported by the computer system to enable the computer system to communicate with the storage devices. In response to initialization of the computer system, the operating/compression system is loaded into the memory device and begins executing before any user-supplied device drivers are loaded into the memory device. Any compressed volume files located on the computer system are assigned drive letters at this time. When the user-supplied device drivers are loaded into the memory device, drive letters are assigned to the various storage devices. A drive letter conflict resolution scheme is provided to resolve conflicts that occur when the operating system attempts to assign a drive letter. The compression system assigns drive letters to compressed volume files (in the case where a compressed drive is created from free space on an existing drive) or to host drives (in the case where the contents of an existing drive are compressed).