Access via the MSCDEX Driver

Summary Table of Characteristics of Various Interfaces

The summary table provided below shows the main characteristics of all of the methods of access described above. As can be seen from this table, the best results are produced by the method of access via ASPI, which ensures an easy, convenient , and system-independent interface for controlling storage media. The next most-positive result is produced by STPI. The main drawback of this method lies in that it is supported only by operating systems of the Windows NT family and doesn t work on Windows 9 x. The development of a custom driver looks like a good idea. Implementing such a driver for both Windows NT and Windows 9 x (by the way, WDM drivers at the source code level ensure compatibility) will ensure support for your application under both operating systems.

Table 4.6: The comparison of different methods of access ( undesired characteristics are highlighted)

	CDFS	cocked	MSCDEX	ASPI	SPTI	SCSI port	mini port	own driver	IOPM
Windows 9x	ˆ’	ˆ’	+	+	ˆ’	ˆ’	ˆ’	+	N/a
Windows NT	+	+	ˆ’	+	+	+	+	+	+
Requires administrative privileges	no	no	ˆ’	no	yes	no	no	id [*]	[**]
Supports CDDA	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Supports CD data	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Raw read from CDDA	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Raw read from CD data	no	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
Potentially dangerous	no	no	no	yes	no	no	no	yes	yes
Well documented	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	no
Ease of use	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no
[*] Here and further on, "id" means "implementation-dependent". [**] Driver installation requires administrative privileges on the local computer; however, its subsequent use doesn t.