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Does anyone know a Windows program that can mount disk images and emulate a physical USB hard drive, including properties like the serial number?

I already found software to emulate CDs and DVDs like Daemon Tools, but that's not for emulating hard drives. Other hard drive mounting tools (like Windows' own VHD system) don't emulate the original drives properties.

Explanation:

I have a USB hard drive with a database of texts on it, that can be viewed and searched through with a special Windows program. The program uses the serial number (or some other property) of the hard drive as license key.

To use the software on the road, it would be nice to make a copy of the drives contents on the notebooks internal hard drive and use that copy instead of the original physical hard drive. To make this work with the license check of the software, the physical hard drive should be emulated, including properties like the serial number.

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    it would be good to know what this special windows program is, maybe there are other ways to solve your problem. otherwise your question is likely be closed of being too localized.
    – Baarn
    Feb 19, 2012 at 17:19

2 Answers 2

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IMDISK, a freeware tool from LTR Data, should do what you want it to. It can mount raw hard drive images, including VHD files, and images in many other formats. You can choose how to mount your image, whether as a standard hard drive, a floppy, an optical drive, or a removable storage device.

(I assume you're referring to the volume serial number, and that the software isn't doing something crazy like using a WMI query to obtain the firmware serial number of the USB device.)

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  • Thanks! I'll try and see whether it works. The question is from a few months ago so I don't fully remember what the original problem was; it might be that I did mean the firmware serial number. I'll post an update after I've tried!
    – Jonathan
    Jul 20, 2012 at 8:28
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    @Jonathan, did you ever get the tool to work for you? I'm dealing with an application that can only export results to removable storage devices, and I don't have any such devices on hand. I do however have a large disk I'd like to emulate one of its folders as being a USB device or something of the sort.
    – jxramos
    Sep 26, 2016 at 22:20
  • @jxramos Undortunately I did not. Good luck, I hope you are able to solve your problem!
    – Jonathan
    Sep 27, 2016 at 5:16
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If there is a USB adaptor connected with the software to fully emulate a USB flash drive or sd card that would be better. We can just boot a raspberry pi without waiting to burn the image. Please no thumbs-down.

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