Volume identifiers

Loading CD-ROM or DVD media into a drive causes automatic reading of the information from the media. Part of this information is the volume identifier.

The volume identifier is a name that is given to an optical volume when it is created or initialized. Depending on the media format, the volume identifier can be up to 32 characters in length. On the system, applications accessing data from the optical volume often refer to it by its volume identifier. For example, a CD-ROM volume identifier might be VOLID01.

Applications that need to access file data from any optical media need to refer to the volume identifier. For example, you can write a C program to use the integrated file system APIs to read file /DIR1/FILE on the optical volume VOLID01. In this case, the application specifies path /QOPT/VOLID01/DIR1/FILE on the open request.