Prev: XP Icons-Use in Win 7
Next: Pond water depth volume calculator or graphing tool ?
From: jim.s.witherspoon on 14 Jul 2010 13:00
Hi guys, thanks for all your help.

I found a payware program that was able to do what I want - IveghnyPQ. I
downloaded a demo version. It was very interesting. It made a virtual DVD
burner appear in Windows Device Manager - two of them actually. I had to
insert a blank virtual DVD disk into the virtual drive. Then I used
Gateway Recovery Management to burn the recovery disks to the virtual
disks. It was just as slow as if I was burning a real DVD - that's how
accurate the emulation was.

When one disk was done, I'd "eject" the virtual disk and insert a new
virtual blank DVD+R (you can choose any format you want, from CD to BD).
Then I'd burn the next virtual disk.

At the end of it all, I had folders that contained files representing three
virtual DVDs. It seemed to be a proprietary format.

I copied these folders over to my desktop computer. I installed the
program on my desktop, and then I used the same program to make actual DVD
copies of the three virtual DVDs. Now I can get standard ISO files from
these actual DVDs.

All pretty darn cool if you ask me. It would be nice if a freeware program
would do the same thing.

Before I did this workaround, i also tried connecting an internal DVD drive
to my USB port using a PATA-to-USB data cable. (Power to the DVD drive was
supplied by AC adapter, not through USB). Windows did not recognize that a
new device was attached, nor would the DVD show up in Device Manager. If I
connect a PATA hard drive (not optical drive), configured as slave, using
this same cable, it does get recognized and shows up as a USB mass storage
device.

thanks again for your help.

jim
From: H-Man on 14 Jul 2010 13:14
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:05:15 -0500, jim.s.witherspoon wrote:

> OK, here's the story. I have a Gateway netbook running XP. It did not
> come with a restore disk, but it does have a Gateway Recovery Management
> program to create restore DVDs (OS, application and drivers). It doesn't
> have an internal DVD burner. It's rather not have to buy an external usb
> burnder; i would use it so rarely. (I will if I have to, though.)
>
> Gateway Recovery Management does not give me the option to burn to an image
> file. It wants to see a DVD burner. So, here's the idea. I'd like to be
> able to mount an ISO file as a virtual DVD drive/disk, so that it will fool
> Gateway Recovery Management into thinking it's writing to an actual DVD.
> Then burn the DVD images to ISO files. I'd hope to end up with image of
> the OS restore DVD, and the Applications and Drivers DVD. I could copy
> this to a USB flash drive or to another computer over the network to use
> later.
>
> Then, when I wanted to do a restore (assuming that the netbook hard drive
> is dead and restores can't be done from it), I'd like to be able to put the
> disk images on the flash drive and restore from the usb flash drive.
>
> But right now, I'm not concerned with how to restore the images, I just
> want to fool GRM into making the images in the first place.
>
> Is there any freeware way to do this?

Jim,

AFAIK there are no freeware virtual DVD burners. IIRC there are payware
options, but this won't get over the next hurtle. Once you have a CD or DVD
ISO, turning that into a bootable USB stick. None of this is really
impossible, but you're getting to where it's impractical. I would use free
drive image program, create a bootable USB thumb drive and work it from
there. DIXML and EASEUS Backup both work with BART PE, which can be run
from a thumb drive. If you add in some other utilities, you have a repair
solution and a restore solution.


--
HK
From: Duddits on 14 Jul 2010 15:01
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:00:23 -0500, "jim.s.witherspoon"
<jim.s.witherspoon(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi guys, thanks for all your help.
>
>I found a payware program that was able to do what I want
>snip

MagicDisc should do the trick - freeware.

http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm

regards

Dud
From: H-Man on 14 Jul 2010 16:48
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:01:35 -0400, Duddits wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:00:23 -0500, "jim.s.witherspoon"
> <jim.s.witherspoon(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi guys, thanks for all your help.
>>
>>I found a payware program that was able to do what I want
>>snip
>
> MagicDisc should do the trick - freeware.
>
> http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm
>
> regards
>
> Dud

Can MagicDisc emulate a burner? From what I can find it can mount an ISO,
and act as a CD/DVD ROM, but not as a CDR/DVDR. You can create an ISO, and
burn an ISO to a CD/DVD burner, but you can't, at least AFAICT, burn a
virtual DVD. The test would be, does your CD/DVD burnning software see it
as a target?

--
HK
From: jim.s.witherspoon on 14 Jul 2010 17:45
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:14:15 -0600, H-Man wrote:

> AFAIK there are no freeware virtual DVD burners. IIRC there are payware
> options, but this won't get over the next hurtle. Once you have a CD or DVD
> ISO, turning that into a bootable USB stick. None of this is really
> impossible, but you're getting to where it's impractical. I would use free
> drive image program, create a bootable USB thumb drive and work it from
> there. DIXML and EASEUS Backup both work with BART PE, which can be run
> from a thumb drive. If you add in some other utilities, you have a repair
> solution and a restore solution.

Hi H-Man,

That's good info, thanks. I could use that to backup and restore the
existing XP partition.

One thing I forgot to mention - the Gateway recovery partition is hidden,
so you can't back it up using normal methods. It's possible to unhide it
- but then you'd have to re-hide it to use it restore from it. Somehow
that Gateway Recovery Management program is able to access that hidden
partition and restore from it, or make recovery DVDs.

jim


First  |  Prev  |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3
Prev: XP Icons-Use in Win 7
Next: Pond water depth volume calculator or graphing tool ?