Searching for “Flash drive mounting” software

Question

I am working on Windows 7 Ultimate.

I have an ISO file and need write access to it. On virtual daemon I only can simulate CD-ROM drives without write access. Is there any mounting software that can simulate a flash drive, or can at least give write access to the ISO?

Answer 1

Have you tried using a Virtual Hard Drive? It will allow you do just this, with no additional software or hardware.

In Windows 7, using Disk Management, you can create a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD), and attach it as a drive on your computer. You can then assign it a drive letter, and partition it, like a normal drive.

The VHD is a file, that resides on your hard drive. You have two options:

• Dynamically sized - The file will start out very small, and will expand to fit its contents. You specify an upper limit to how large the file can get.
• Fixed size - You specify the size of the file. It will always be that size, no matter how much data is actually stored in it.

A walkthrough on how to do this is here: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/creating-attaching-mounting-vhd-files-windows-7-windows-2008-r2.html

Answer 2

I don't think this is possible with an ISO image - you can't "write" to a disc image. That's not what the format is for. There is no such thing as a CD drive which can directly write files to a CD.

You can, however, use a tool like MagicISO or PowerISO to remove or add files to an existing ISO disc image. That being said, when you actually save the ISO image, it ends up re-writing the entire disc image due to the way the format is.

Finally, if the underlying filesystem in the ISO file is UDF-based, it may be possible to implement writing directly to the virtual drive by letting it act as a virtual CD-RW. That being said, I believe the performance hit would be a lot worse then just using an ISO editing tool.

If you want to simulate an actual flash drive, what you're looking for is a virtual filesystem. One of the easiest ways would be to use TrueCrypt to create a virtual (encrypted) filesystem in a single file. You can then mount that file and use it like any other hard drive/flash drive. Unmount it, and your data is stored in a single file (which you can re-mount whenever you'd like, on any computer system).

There are alternative programs which can do the same thing (and without the encryption), but TrueCrypt is free, open source, cross platform, and pretty easy to use.

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That being said, since you commented on what you really are trying to accomplish, you should use a virtual floppy disc emulator. This will allow both read/write access to the virtual drive, and should work with the appropriate drive letter.