PMIO has extensive support for disk volumes. A volume is simply a piece of media; a single disk such as a CD, a floppy disk, or a hard disk.
Every disk volume that can be used on the Windows operating system is marked with an identifier called a serial number. There are about four billion possible values for this number, and they are assigned when the volume is created or formatted. The idea is that no two volumes in use on any particular computer should ever have the same serial number, and that the number can therefore be used to uniquely identify the volume.
PMIO takes advantage of this to keep track of every disk volume it uses. The same system is used to identify all your disks. PMIO directly supports the use of:
Other disks types can also be used as 'foreign' volumes.
When a new volume is introduced to PMIO, its serial number is remembered. This information is used throughout the program, encoded into addresses which are in turn used to identify your files and folders. This means that PMIO can work with all kinds of media, even ones that have not been invented yet, and you never have to worry about what physical drive a volume is mounted in. If you reinstall your operating system, reformat your hard drive, or change the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive, PMIO automatically detects and handles the situation. In some cases it will ask you what you have done. This happens most often if you are in the habit of swapping hard drives using drive bays.
PMIO tries to guess the type of a volume from the type of drive it is mounted in. You can override this and give your volumes meaningful names by using the Volume Manager tool which is available from the Tools menu.
For more information on volume handling, see How PMIO works with volume serial numbers.