Windows 7 Embedded（非CE）USB Mass Storage Client

Question

My company is developing a docking station for legacy SCSI drives whereby the user would be able to connect the SCSI drive to the docking station and then connect in the docking station to a "host" computer (running Windows) via usb. We are effectively developing and external hard drive that allows the user to swap the drive. That being said, we are very limited relative to the hardware we can use because the motherboard must have a SCSI controller either on the board or via an adapter card. So we have identified a hardware system that consists of an Mini-ITX form factor motherboard with a USB Client (slave) port/controller along with an Adaptec SCSI controller PCIe card.

So, my questions are these: is it possible using Windows 7 Embedded (non CE version) to implement this "USB mass storage client" functionality and if so, can someone point me in the direction as to how this is accomplished? Is there some special driver that I need to install that enables this functionality? Do I need to write some custom code to get this to work or is it as simple as configuring some "USB mass storage client" driver such that it maps the USB client port to the connected SCSI storage device? I know this can be done with Windows 7 Compact Edition but it looks like a real pain from what I can see to go through the entire process of creating the image, including additional drivers, etc. Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

So I have answered my questions. Windows 7 has USB Function Mass Storage Client driver already installed. In Win 7 Embedded CE you can selectively install it or not. You do still need to write some custom code to get this to work. This would be the code that would basically interface between the USB Client controller hardware and the device you want to read and write to. The USB Client controller we are looking at using came with a sample Mass Storage sample application that shows how things are done (using a RAM Disk versus a real hard drive or flash memory). I have modify their code to read and write to a hard drive but I am having problems with write speed. Looks like another post.