Mounting .ISO's Into An NT File System?

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."

Comments

Re:daemon toolz

[BRTB]

Daemon Tools, while definitely a useful program even without the cd-lock emulators, can only appear as a maximum of 4 virtual drives. The submitter needs much more (>= 200).

Actually I could use something like this as well, since the infamous Microtest/xStore machine still doesn't work right - never did get any of the code from them - and the school netadmin isn't going to have a clue how to work the samba-sharing-loop-mounts linux server after my contract runs out.

Virtual CD

[Oily Tuna]

Microsoft have one - vcd.exe is the installer.

2-10-2000 18:25 24,064 VCdControlTool.exe
2-10-2000 18:05 11,296 VCdRom.sys


I can't remember how I got it though - possibly the Windows XP beta program.

An explanation

[Webmoth]

You've got it backwards. The poster wants to mount some 200 images as folders, not drive letters. SUBST isn't going to help him.

For example, disc 1 would be a file such as c:\images\disc1.iso and be mounted as c:\library\disc1\ ; disc 2 would be c:\images\disc2.iso mounted as c:\library\disc2\ and so on. Basically, the single *.iso file is an entire file system (read: disc) squashed into a file and sitting on another file system.

By way of explanation, file system images are individual files representing a disk partition. They are as if you were to take the data off of a disk bit by bit, in sequence, with all partition information, file tables, etc., and put it into a file. This image can be ISO, FAT, NTFS, VFAT, FAT32, EXT2, EXT3, whatever format you can think of. You can have a FAT32 filesystem residing within an NTFS filesystem. With a proper operating system, you can mount this "virtual filesystem in a file" as a filesystem. In UNIX type OS's, there are no drive letters, but the filesystem can be mounted to a directory. In Microsoft-type OS's, every filesystem is mounted as a drive letter rather than a directory, which inherently limits you to a maximum of 26 simultaneously mounted "drives." The UNIX limitation is much higher.

In the days of DOS, it was found that some programs work best if their folders were in the root directory of some drive. Unfortunately, this made for a very cluttered root directory. A workaround was implemented: SUBST allows you to mount a directory as a virtual drive letter, letting the program have it's own root directory, while allowing the user to "sort out" his hard drive by having directories for programs, etc.

DOS and Windows have never had native support for mounting partitions as directories; this support IS available (finally) under Windows XP. Mounting image files as folders is uniquely UNIX-like; I don't know if XP supports this or not.