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Mounting .ISO's Into An NT File System?

Posted by timothy on from the through-the-eye-of-the-needle dept.

haplo21112 asks: "We all know how to mount an ISO image into the Linux file system: mount -t iso9660 -o loop image.iso /mnt/isoimage. Unfortunately the rather large software distribution server I am stuck with here at work is 2000 based, but we would love to replicate this functionality somehow on the NT System. I have done many Google searches to find a way of doing this and come up empty. There seem to many utilities that will mount the .ISO as a 'virtual' CD rom drive, but this doesn't really solve the problem since we are talking about mounting something on the order of 200 .ISO images this way. I am looking to replicate the Linux functionality, create a directory, and mount the ISOs as subdirectories."

5 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Norton Virtual CD + Drive Mapping in Win2k by DeMorganLaw · · Score: 4, Informative

    I got a free copy of norton virtual drive with my last motherboard, it copies the contents of the CD and stores them as a fake partition. As far as I know win2k also will let you mount/map... a partition as a directory onto another drive partition. However I don't know what kind of partition Norton makes the virtual drives, if they are fat, kinda screwed in a 2K enviormentl. No permissions and doubt you can map them to a folder. My $0.02

  2. Nero - by Ahead software has this capability by seigniory · · Score: 5, Informative

    Aside from being one of the best pieces of software to burn CS (and so much more), NERO by Ahead Software

    http://www.nero.com/en/function.htm

    Has a SCSI/Image interpreter that mounts .iso images as drives on your Win32 system.

  3. build an ISO server by cr@ckwhore · · Score: 4, Informative

    Interesting topic, because I was just thinking about this the other day. I'm planning on building an ISO server, and you should consider the same.

    The server will be based on Linux, and have plenty of disk space to hold the large number of ISO files. I'd write a script that would read a directory listing and mount all ISO files via the /dev/loopN and iso9660 support.

    From there, the ISO mount points are going to be accessible via an SMB (Samba) share.

    This will allow users on the network to use their "Network Neighborhood" or "Computers Near Me" interfaces to browse the files. In fact, most users will probably never know about the ISO files, nor will they know that they're browsing a linux machine. Its going to be ultra transparent.

    --
    Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
  4. Links by Webmoth · · Score: 5, Informative

    You may find the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles informative, if not the answer to you questions:

    How to Create and Manipulate NTFS Junction Points (Q205524)
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=k b; EN-US;Q205524

    How Single Instance Storage Identifies Which Volumes to Manage (Q226545)
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=k b; en-us;Q226545

    Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Q175761)
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=k b; EN-US;Q175761

    (Be sure to remove spaces in the URLs. The slashcode on slashdot has a bug that inserts spaces in long words.)

    I think that Windows 2000/XP may not support filesystems that are not seen as physical volumes (partitions) or logical volumes on a dynamic partition. I have not been able to find anything that indicates file-based filesystem images are supported.

    --
    Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
  5. Two Products by danFL-NERaves · · Score: 5, Informative
    There are at least two products which let you mount ISO files as volumes under NT/2000/XP.

    1. DAEMON Tools (currently v2.88)

    2. FarStone Tech's Virtual Drive (currently v6.2)

    My recommendation is DAEMON Tools. It is a quick and dirty freeware solution which has proven rock solid on my systems. It mounts ISO and a variety of other CD image file types as lettered drives. It's really built for use on a workstation but once the drives are mounted they can be shared like any other normal drive. (Tools to create CD images are not included.)

    Virtual Drive (Network Edition) is commercial software and comes in a variety of languages. It has a prettier interface and includes CD management tools (ISO creation). Personally it didn't impress me but YMMV.