Back to the original question concerning "Merely a Marginally Manipulatable Manifestation of Mail Messages" (or, "The M: Drive")...
The free space shown is tied to the exchange install point, not a particular information store - the "Root" of the ExIFS. Since you can have multiple stores spread across multiple drives, "free space" is really more complex than can be represented by that one file system API (getfreespace). "Free Space" could be seen as the amount of space on the drive with your EDB and STM files, but they could be on different drives and there could be more than one of each, so how would you calculate it? "Free Space" could be seen as the amount of space on the log drive since you can't process more transactions than that even if there is a big drive for the EDB and STM. But there could be more than one log drive as well if you have multiple storage groups. The ExIFS driver is a single point of access to the entire set of storage groups and stores on the system, so the used and available drive space can be spread across multiple volumes. There might be an argument for adding it all up and showing it that way. On the other hand there is an argument for showing the smallest available since that will be the bottleneck. The problem is, since this is held to the rules of file systems, there are fewer choices available than one might be able to imagine. In Windows 2000 I can attach my CDROM drive (or any other drive for that matter) to a subdirectory of my C: drive. That doesn't make the size of the C: drive change by 600MB though just because there's 600MB more space in the file tree. Nor does that space factor into free space display for the C: drive. In the other direction, I can map a drive, say H:, to my home directory on the file server, which happens to have a quota on it. The free space displayed for the H: drive, therefore, is not a representation of how much space is really "available". With Exchange, you must understand the way physical storage is used to correctly manage your system. Physical storage is used by several different "files" which make up an Exchange "store". No plain representation of the available physical storage will really tell you the space available to the entire store. So, since one wouldn't typically ask a physical disk drive how much space an Exchange Store has, there's no need to require an accurate answer. It's a bit like asking a real estate agent to compute how much furniture someone could own based on the size of a piece of land (i.e. a lot). A lot may be 30'x100', but that doesn't tell you anything about furniture. The person in question may have a Storage Unit somewhere else. They may have another house, or several. However, if you want to get a list of all the furniture, the lot (or rather the front door of the house) is a decent place to start. Once there you can ask the person who answers the door (file system driver) to see their containers (rooms) and items (sofas and chairs). All you need is an address. "M:" will probably do. ======================================================= Andy Webb [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.swinc.com Simpler-Webb, Inc. Austin, TX 512-322-0071 -- Way to go USPS Cycling Team and Lance Armstrong!! -- ======================================================= -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Miller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 10:13 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: E2K M Drive (moving it) WOW! That was an amazing explanation.. Thank you Andy Kevinm M WLKMMAS, UCC+WCA, CKWSE -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Webb, Andy Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 8:10 AM To: Exchange Discussions Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: E2K M Drive (moving it) The M drive is merely a manifestation[1] of mail messages. You can read quite a bit more on Windows Installable File System drivers on MSDN. A file system is really just a collection of APIs that allow you to navigate a set of data in a logical fashion - containers (folders) and items (files). It shouldn't be too hard to see how one might view mail data as containers (folders) and items (messages). [3] So, the ExIFS driver, which is installed with Exchange 2000 is the "Exchange Installable File System driver." It allows a certain set of well known APIs [2]to view the containers and items. It just so happens that if you give a file system supporting those APIs a drive letter, you can see it through Explorer or a CMD window, or any of the other standard Windows file dialog boxes...because they use the file system APIs to access data. It's no different than a network drive or a RAM drive or a flash memory card or a zip drive or ... It is merely a manifestation of data in the form of folders and files. The thing to remember is that since it is just a view of the mail messages presented by the file system APIs, it's not necessarily the most feature rich way to manipulate that data. The manipulation via the ExIFS (M: drive) is limited by the set of file system APIs [2]. On the other hand, the ability to manipulate the data through a mail client like Outlook has a very rich set of APIs for dealing with mail data - much beyond the simple functions for finding and displaying files. The messaging APIs that are native to the Exchange store allow things like getrecipients, addattachment, resolvenames, etc. So, the M: drive can be seen as an (abbreviated) acronym for "Marginally Manipulatable Manifestation of Mail Messages." regards [4] Andy [1] to make evident or certain by showing or displaying [2] readfile, writefile, movefile, deletefile, renamefile, openfile, closefile, findfile, etc. [3] it's slightly more complex than this because a mail message is actually a container as well. it contains a header and a body and perhaps one or more attachments, which themselves can be messages (containers). it also can contain multiple bodies (e.g mime multipart alternative content) that display based on the best capabilities of the client. [4] hope this didn't make it worse ======================================================= Andy Webb [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.swinc.com Simpler-Webb, Inc. Austin, TX 512-322-0071 -- Way to go USPS Cycling Team and Lance Armstrong!! -- ======================================================= _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
