Storage Drivers

About Storage Drivers, and Miniport Drivers

Storage drivers form the basis for the entire operating system. The array of different driver models to choose from can be dizzying. We can help unravel the mystery of when to choose storport vs iscsiport or scsi miniport.

The most common storage driver models we work with are StorPort miniport drivers for physical and virtual HBAs, virtual storage drivers that expose a block device to the operating system without underlying hardware, volume manager and volume filter drivers that sit above the partition layer, and disk encryption filter drivers that perform on the fly encryption and decryption at the volume or disk level. We also develop iSCSI initiator components and have experience with NVMe and SATA AHCI driver stacks. Each of these models comes with its own set of requirements around queue depth management, power state transitions, error handling, and Windows Hardware Lab Kit (HLK) certification.

Past storage projects at Joya Systems have included virtual disk drivers for enterprise storage appliances, encryption filter drivers for government and healthcare customers with strict at rest data protection requirements, and StorPort miniport drivers for custom embedded hardware. We have also helped teams diagnose and fix storage layer bugs that manifested as data corruption or unexpected I/O failures under load — often the hardest class of storage bug to reproduce reliably. See our past driver projects for more examples, or contact us to discuss your storage driver requirement.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What types of Windows storage drivers does Joya Systems develop?

We develop StorPort miniport drivers for physical and virtual storage adapters, virtual disk drivers that expose block devices without real hardware, volume filter and volume manager drivers, disk encryption filter drivers, and iSCSI initiator components. We work across HDD, SSD, NVMe, and custom embedded storage hardware.

Q: Can you develop virtual storage or disk encryption drivers?

Yes. Virtual storage drivers, which present a block device to the OS backed by memory, a file, a network resource, or custom hardware, and disk encryption filter drivers are both areas where we have shipped production code. Encryption filter work includes key management integration, transparent I/O transformation, and compatibility testing with Windows BitLocker and third party full disk encryption.

Q: What is the difference between StorPort and SCSI miniport drivers?

Both models use a port/miniport architecture where Microsoft's port driver handles OS integration and the miniport handles hardware specific logic. StorPort is the modern replacement for the older SCSI port driver and provides significantly better multiprocessor scalability, improved queue management, and better support for high-performance storage. New storage miniport development should use StorPort; the legacy SCSI miniport model is only relevant for maintaining very old drivers. Contact us if you need help choosing the right model for your project.

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