Virtual Disk, Version 1.3.3 Final FS-plugin for Total Commander that allows to mount disk images as additional virtual drives in system. Author of the plugin: Konstantin Vlasov, 2011 Homepage: http://flint-inc.ru/ E-mail: support@flint_inc.ru The driver is based on the open-source project FileDisk by Bo Branten, 2009 Homepage: http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/ E-mail: bosse@acc.umu.se Source code of the modified driver and command-line tool is available at http://flint-inc.ru/eng/info/virtualdisk.html Description ----------- This plugin allows to mount disk images as additional drives. It works only under WinNT systems starting with Windows 2000 (32- and 64-bit). When an image is mounted, there is a new drive appears in the system. Its letter is specified earlier, and the new drive contains all the content of the image file. The following three modes are available: 1. HDD - emulation of local hard disk drive. In this mode one can mount images of single partitions of hard drives formatted in FAT or NTFS system, and also images of floppy diskettes and flash-drives with the FAT file system. 2. FDD - emulation of floppy drive. This mode allows to mount all the same images as in HDD mode, except for the NTFS partitions (Windows does not allow to use NTFS on floppies). 3. CD/DVD - CD-drive emulation (from the point of view of the system, there is no difference between CD and DVD). This mode is used for mounting CD- and DVD-disk images. One can use ISO format and sometimes - BIN- and NRG-images. (Unfortunately, the exact information, when BIN- and NRG-images can be mounted, is absent.) Also for the HDD and FDD modes there is the "Read only" modifier that allows to disable modifying of the image mounted. CD-drive emulation is always performed in Read-Only mode. Installing ---------- For installing the plugin, just open its archive in TC panel, and TC will suggest to install the plugin automatically. If you have auto-installation function turned off, please, refer to TC documentation on manual plugin installation. After that, it is necessary to install the driver which is needed for the plugin to work. Call the context menu for the file vd_filedisk.inf in the VD_Driver subdirectory located in the plugin installation directory and select the "Install" command. The system will then install the driver vd_filedisk.sys and ask to reboot the computer. Note that rebooting is necessary for the driver (and hence the plugin) to work! If you don't have the "Install" command in the context menu of the INF-file, you can use the old methode of installing the driver: copy the vd_filedisk.sys file in the \Windows\system32\drivers\ folder, then import the file vd_filedisk.reg into the registry by double-clicking it, and restart the computer. IMPORTANT!!! In 64-bit Windows versions all the operations described above on installing the driver must be performed only from Windows Explorer! If one performs them from Total Commander, the driver will not be installed! This happens because TC is a 32-bit application and in 64-bit Windows it works in the 32-bit environment emulation mode. Work with plugin ---------------- After installing a new folder appears in Total Commander's Network Neighbourhood - "Virtual Disks". In this folder a list of image files is present. At first this list is empty. To add images just copy image file in plugin's folder. The image is not copied itself, plugin just remembers a link on it. To exclude the image from the list, simply delete it by usual way - original file will not be corrupted or deleted. For customizing the image parameters, press Enter or Alt+Enter, or just select "Properties" from right-click context menu. The Properties dialog will appear. In this dialog you can see full path to the image file, its current status (mounted/unmounted), and also you can select drive letter and mounting mode (HDD/FDD/CD). To mount image press Mount button. If the image is mounted, the Unmount button is shown instead. On rebooting the computer all mounted images become unmounted. There is an option "Mount on reboot" that allows to remount the necessary images back: if the image was mounted just before the reboot it is mounted again, else it remains unmounted. If some errors occur during this auto-remount process, they are written into log file VirtualDisk.log that is present in the plugin's folder. IMPORTANT NOTES for work with plugin: ------------------------------------- 1. In Windows 2000 the driver allows users to mount images without checking NTFS permissions. In WinXP and later this problem is not present. 2. When working in multiuser environments, it is impossible to mount images of the same type from different user accounts. Besides, you cannot mount an image if there is an image present mounted using the vd_filedisk.exe tool, you'll have to unmount them first. These two problems will be fixed in future versions of the plugin. If they are vital for your work, please use the vd_filedisk.exe tool only. 3. It is not recommended to mount/unmount images from different Total Commander instances. There can be a situation when one copy of TC says the image is mounted, and another one says, that it is unmounted. In most cases such conflicts should be resolved automatically but this aspect is not tested thoroughly enough. If you meet such a problem, there is an additional button on Settings dialog named "Toggle state". This button just toggles the software flag of mounting and does not perform any real actions with the images. 4. CD-images can be mounted only in CD-mode, FAT-images in HDD and FDD modes, and NTFS-images only in HDD mode. Otherwise the image will be mounted, the virtual disk will appear, but on trying to access it you will get the error that the drive is not formatted. 5. The new drive is not visible for programs that get drives list from list of system devices. This is so, because this new drive is not a system device but just a logical drive. In future versions I'll try to add creation of the appropriate system device. 6. In Windows 2000 formatting mounted images into FAT does not work. This is a known problem of the driver, the fix is not planned. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) -------------------------------- Q. I've installed the plugin, try to mount an image and get the error: Error while creating the virtual drive! The driver is probably not installed. A. For the plugin to work it is necessary to install the driver; it should be installed manually, automatic installation of the plugin in TC does not install the driver! How to install the driver you may read above, in the section "Installing". Q. On trying to mount the image I get the following error: Error while creating the virtual drive! There are too many drives of this type mounted already. A. By default, the driver allows to mount only 4 devices of each type (i.e. 4 virtual FDDs, 4 CDs and 4 HDDs). If you need more, you may change this value in the system registry: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VD_FileDisk\Parameters] NumberOfDevices=dword:00000004 After that you'll need to reboot the computer. Q. When mounting the image the new drive is created, but I cannot access it: an error is shown. A. This means that the format of the image is not supported by the plugin (more exactly - by the driver). Make sure that you haven't accidentally mounted CD/DVD-image as HDD or vice versa. Also note that the set of supported formats is currently very limited (see the section "Description" for details). Q. In my Windows x64 the plugin does not mount images. What's wrong? A. Maybe, you have installed the driver incorrectly. In 64-bit Windows systems the driver should be installed only from Windows Explorer, not from Total Commander, because TC is a 32-bit application; for such applications Windows x64 substitutes the system folders and registry keys. As the result, the installing of the driver is performed into a wrong folder. Just in case, I write here this WARNING: ---------------------------------------- My plugin works with low-level Windows functions, and this is not safe. I cannot guarantee that the program works absolutely correctly (especially because I haven't work much with programming of drivers). So, I distribute this plugin "as is", without any guarantees and promises. Use it on your own risk. I just want to add, that as much as I can I will try to correct all bugs found. After all, I use this plugin myself, and I'm interested in its safe and correct work...