<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!-- Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies) All rights reserved. -->

<!-- This component and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the License 

"Eclipse Public License v1.0" which accompanies this distribution, 

and is available at the URL "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html". -->

<!-- Initial Contributors:

    Nokia Corporation - initial contribution.

Contributors: 

-->

<!DOCTYPE concept

  PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">

<concept id="GUID-629AB2C9-BEDD-5166-8B09-F8DFF7527C03" xml:lang="en"><title>The

System Drive</title><shortdesc>This topic describes the properties and its uses of system drive</shortdesc><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>

<p>Symbian platform allows a drive on a device to be marked as the system

drive. The system drive is set up during device startup and cannot subsequently

be changed. It has the following properties: </p>

<ul>

<li id="GUID-F0C2D00C-C7B6-5784-9834-02AC3ED7647A"><p>it is both readable

and writable. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-13E4ECB2-E432-5741-BDB7-CA1413CF1F93"><p>it is always available,

cannot be removed from the device, and is secure. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-74F7015E-1937-5199-978D-C21960E1F429"><p>it is non-volatile,

which means that the drive is located on media such as flash memory or battery-backed

RAM. </p> </li>

</ul>

<p>Typically, the system drive is used: </p>

<ul>

<li id="GUID-DA8E500E-F940-56BA-A506-D9D69D9F231A"><p>for storing persistent

settings for system and application software. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-2EC9B640-BE97-5DA3-A222-37A7DF553B2E"><p>for storing localisation

resources. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-0FCD75EF-9D0A-520C-BD96-8E03372CF52B"><p>as a default drive for

user data. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-E77D6A04-4CCE-5EA1-99B7-2F399985A82F"><p>as a target drive for

installing software. </p> </li>

</ul>

<section id="GUID-0544A0FC-6CDC-57A1-9750-9445DC7CD521"><title>Getting the

system drive</title> <p>The system drive is identified by its drive letter.

Use the function <xref href="GUID-E263C747-946F-35AA-9F1D-41833BD350FC.dita#GUID-E263C747-946F-35AA-9F1D-41833BD350FC/GUID-4DBDB23D-A64D-3428-8D6B-1941CB457CB6"><apiname>RFs::GetSystemDriveChar()</apiname></xref> to find the

system drive letter. </p> <p>If you also need to know the drive number, then

you can use the function <xref href="GUID-E263C747-946F-35AA-9F1D-41833BD350FC.dita#GUID-E263C747-946F-35AA-9F1D-41833BD350FC/GUID-E3FADD47-C66B-3E79-827A-DEE36EE79B0E"><apiname>RFs::GetSystemDrive()</apiname></xref> to find

this. However, getting the drive letter is the most common requirement. </p> <p>[Note

that in versions of Symbian platform before 9.2, the system drive number was

fetched using the function <codeph>BaflUtils::GetSystemDrive()</codeph>. This

function is now <i>deprecated</i> and should <i>not</i> be used.] </p> </section>

</conbody></concept>