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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."
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
Aside from being one of the best pieces of software to burn CS (and so much more), NERO by Ahead Software
.iso images as drives on your Win32 system.
http://www.nero.com/en/function.htm
Has a SCSI/Image interpreter that mounts
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.
/dev/loopN and iso9660 support.
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
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
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.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
You may find the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles informative, if not the answer to you questions:
k b; EN-US;Q205524
k b; en-us;Q226545
k b; EN-US;Q175761
How to Create and Manipulate NTFS Junction Points (Q205524)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
How Single Instance Storage Identifies Which Volumes to Manage (Q226545)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Q175761)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
(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.
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.