Hardcopy drivers can print data to a disk file so that the print file can be sent to the printer later without any need for application intervention. The print file can be used as a file interchange format. Printing to file means the hardcopy driver converts the prespool input into a device-dependent format and stores the output directly to a file. File system errors must be reported.

There are two methods the hardcopy driver can implement to allow printing to disk. The system-provided method for printing to disk requires that the hardcopy driver handle a file name as a szLogAddress on a OD_DIRECT Enable Subfunction 02H - FillPhysicalDeviceBlock. The other method for printing to disk enables the hardcopy driver to change the job properties dialog to allow the user to input a fully-qualified file name. There are circumstances in which the hardcopy driver must know the format of the required output file. For example, a hardcopy driver can output raw PostScript or Encapsulated PostScript (EPS).