The system drive

Symbian OS 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:

• it is both readable and writable.

• it is always available, cannot be removed from the device, and is secure.

• it is non-volatile, which means that the drive is located on media such as flash memory or battery-backed RAM.

Typically, the system drive is used:

• for storing persistent settings for system and application software.

• for storing localisation resources.

• as a default drive for user data.

• as a target drive for installing software.

The system drive is identified by the drive number. You use the function RFs::GetSystemDrive() to find the system drive number.

[Note that in versions of Symbian OS before 9.2, the system drive number was fetched using the function BaflUtils::GetSystemDrive(). This function is now deprecated and should not be used.]