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About the Quick I/O naming convention

To treat a file as a raw character device, Quick I/O requires a file name extension to create an alias for a regular VxFS file. Quick I/O recognizes the alias when you add the following suffix to a file name:

::cdev:vxfs:

The cdev portion is an acronym for character device. Whenever an application opens an existing VxFS file with the suffix ::cdev:vxfs, Quick I/O treats the file as if it were a raw device. For example, if the file xxx is a regular VxFS file, then an application can access xxx as a raw character device by opening it with the name:

xxx::cdev:vxfs:


  Note   When Quick I/O is enabled, you cannot create a regular VxFS file with a name that uses the ::cdev:vxfs: extension. If an application tries to create a regular file named xxx::cdev:vxfs:, the create fails. If Quick I/O is not available, it is possible to create a regular file with the ::cdev:vxfs: extension, but this could cause problems if Quick I/O is later enabled. Symantec advises you to reserve the extension only for Quick I/O files.