Virtual CDs Storage...

[Brett]

Does anyone have experience with Virtual CD storage, I have an external 80gb harddrive that I am thinking of partitioning into several 750mb partitions and copying all my CDs onto this. That way I can just plug in my 80gb and have access to all my installation CDs for whereever I am at.

Will this work in theory?

-Brett

[Cayars]

Why do that? Why not just rip your CD/DVD to an ISO format and keep them that way. You can use Deamon tools to mount what ever CD/DVD you need. It can work by GUI or command line and it's free.

Carlo

[jkoon]

Well for what it’s worth I keep copies of most of my Microsoft programs (windows xp, office, etc). In folders on one of my hard drive so that when I do an update or something and it needs the cd I can just point it to that folder, woks just fine.

But I know many programs (mostly games?) won’t let you navigate to a folder like that for the install data, they want it to be on its own drive.

[Brett]

Yeah I knew of software that would play ISO files, but am I correct to assume this is not a plug&play situation?

Ideally I would like to be able to plug the external harddrive into any computer, and instantly have at access my entire DRIVER/OS/PRODUCTIVITY/DOCUMENTS collection, I know games are picky so I am ignoring that for the time being.

My thinking was if I partition them as small drives the computer has no way of knowing the difference between a CD and a harddrive in that sense, if they are both at root, correct?

I could go ahead and test this theory, but that requires me to move 50gigs of data and format the drive, so I want to be pretty sure this idea will work before I do that...

-Brett

[Cayars]

No many games will complain that it isn't on the CD. It's pretty simple to tell if it's a hard drive or CD. That's actually why I suggested the ISO format.

Carlo

[_Shorty]

my vote's for making a CD image and mounting it with the freeware Daemon Tools

[V_D_O]

Well, one possible obstacle could be the fact that you'd have about 87 more drive letters on your hard disk than there are letters in the alphabet (with a floppy, HDD and proper CDROM in the computer).

Windows might be a little unhappy about that.

[Brett]

I think I am gonna go with the ISO and install the ISO software Carlo mentioned onto the drive itself. That way I should in "theory" be able to run the drive & ISOs on any computer I plug the drive into.

Thanks for all the suggestions,
Brett

[Eric3a]

I use Nero for that: I keep some CD as an "Image" on my HD. It creates a kind of virtual CD device where you can load and eject your CD images.
then you just use them exactly as you would a real CD.

Check them out.
Eric

[Cayars]

The nice thing about Daemon Tools is that it works with CD & DVD image files. It can emulate certain types of drives for software protection schemes and supports multiple drives letters (mounted volumes) at the same time.

You can "mount" a drive across a network (it doesn't care) and you can script or use batch files to unmount and mount drives for you when you need them.

I use this program a long with DVDecrypter (ISO mode) to archive my favorite DVDs for online access. It's pretty cool to have a couple of hundred DVDs online when ever you feel like watching them.

Carlo

[jip]

It sounds like you want to access your CD occasionally and for archival purposes. If I were you, I would just put them on CDR that are cheap and save the HD space for something useful.

- J

[_Shorty]

no, what he wants to do is have access to dozens of CDs without having to take dozens of CDs with him.