I think he means booting the system from a drive full of compressed ISOs. I don't think that is possible since I don't think LILO or GRUB can decompress ISO to RAMDISC without having the ISO decompressed in the first place. xboxrulz

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I think what you meant you want to do is ripping an image from a cd on to your hard drive correct? Well that is what I understand from reading your topic post. But if I understood your question correctly their are many programs that you can use to rip a cd on to your hard drive in which you can use as backup of your current CD just in case your CD somehow becomes unreadable. Certain programs that I use is winISO, cloneCD, and even NERO I believe are the best tools to use if you are looking to rip an image from a CD to your hard drive. All the programs I believe needs to be purchased to experience the programs features full functionalities. I also would suggest that you make sure the ripped copies of your CD is a good rip because I ran into issues where the ripped images can become corrupted in certain instances. Also I believe that there are also programs out their that can run the images from your computer, which acts as a drive on its own. I can remember the software name on the top of my head but it allows you to run the image without burning it on to a disc. Hopefully, you will find what I mentioned is useful and good luck with whatever you are doing...

 

 

 

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Don't want to be rude but, this is the most complex computer question since no one actually know what this guy is trying to ask, it's like sherades.

xboxrulz

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My only question here is... why would you worry about the Windows aspect... in other words... I've yet to see a LiveCD distribution of Windows in any form as of yet... but there's always exceptions to what I've seen I guess...

Basically... If you want Windows 95, 98, Me, 2k, XP, and Vista.... that's only about 6 cd's anyways... but most cd's i've found would just run the standard installation environment...

Of course you can use GRUB to bootfrom=/sda1/*.iso ... but i believe you need to reference the kernel as well... as far as windows is concerned... I have no idea how to segregate the kernel...

But in all reality... I see very few reasons to need to boot various versions of windows... Usually they are built upon one another and at least somewhat backwards compatible... however... unless you have some sort of tool to make a snapshot of a windows installation into an .iso... i barely see how this would help...

For real, you may as well just install a few versions of windows onto your hard drive... though I think you have to do it in ascending order from versions... like 95 then 98 then Me then 2k then XP then Vista... although I doubt you'll be able to use NTFS unless you can make several partitions...

I would probably just put XP and Vista onto the hard drive... for ordinary booting... then if you really want something else... like linux, set up your floppy with grub and bootfrom the .iso's on your disk... Additionally, I believe you need to point to the kernel as well... which is part of where I lose track of the Windows portion.... like i said...


--=-=-=-=


apart from that, I would agree with previous posts that you might just have to use VMWare to boot from images... which I would say would be ripped from cd's or at least saved from a complete setup and installation... which is where you'd be stuck again with windows to just one computer... hell, I can't even switch out hardware without windows blue screening me... I usually have to do the old "REMOVE, boot, shutdown, REPLACE, boot" just to swap out various PCI cards... unless I stick them in a previously empty slot...

but if you do find something more helpful... please keep us all updated... : )

good luck

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He wants to write an ISO file to a hard disk, thus making the hard disk appear to be the ISO, not a hard disk with an ISO file in the root. This works. A mac can write an image of its install disk to a hard drive with disk utility and it will boot up no problem just like the dvd was in the drive, but faster. It won't do non-apple formats, however. I have been looking for the same thing. I'm sure there is a Linux program out there, but I am admittedly a novice. Does anyone know how to do this? Whether it boots or not is fine right now.

-reply by Dave

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I would recommend using a Live Linux CD of some sort so we have the necessary tools to do what is required.

You want to setup GRUB on the hard drive to "pretend to boot off a CD", remember it's only faking Grub but we know it'll be using the Hard Drive.

You need to create partitions, usually each size should be 700MB but if you want to save space or allow for more partitions, create them at the same size as the ISO files but allow for 1-8MB extra (unless you know how to exactly tell how many bytes you'll specifically need, but remember partitions are hard to be completely accurate down to the bytes.

These partitions will be formatted as CD file system.

We then use our CD Writing software to write these ISOs to those partitions, configure a grub menu so we have the ability to chose which CD we want to boot from, and that's why we fake grub to think it's booting from a CD because our file system suggests it's a CD we're using anyways.

Maybe I need to show a step-by-step on this, but it'll take me a while to write it up as I don't have time to do a lot here.

However, if you have ISO files, you could just boot from them, just the ability to mount an ISO at boot and using grub to boot from them should have been enough, but I guess that's another method I probably have to show as well.

Cheers,


MC

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hey i haven't tried burning an ISO onto a hard drive (call it mount, not burn). You can use Virtual Drives applications to mount ISO on a hard drive, it should be bootable if the ISO file you are mounting a bootable one. These apps can create temporary virtual drives (e.g. partition, CD/DVD drive) where you can place ISO files to be used on specific tasks.

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I have the same question
Burn Iso To Hd?

It is not too hard to understand: the whole idea is to "burn" (lacking a better term) an iso to an HD or HD partition so that that partition has the same files and boot sector as the iso.

-reply by Rodrigo Rollan

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I know what u mean
Burn Iso To Hd?

This is a rough guide to 'burn' an iso to a disk, it is a pretty advanced guide and the paths such as /dev/hda1 and (hd0,0) will have to be substituted with what is relivant to your system. Maybe the other users can refine this guide and make it easier to use for beginners, I could even make an interactive script if I could find the time.

Make an ext3 partition that can hold the iso, I did 1 gb just to be safe
Example:
#fdisk /dev/hda
...Make partition

-Mount the image and the hd
#mkdir hd && mount /dev/hda1 hd
#mkdir iso && mount -o loop image.Iso iso

-Copy all the files across
#cp iso/* hd/* -are

-Install grub files (yours may be in a different place)
#cd hd
#mkdir boot && cd boot && mkdir grub && cd grub
#cp /usr/lib/grub/i386*/* ./

-Use your favourite editor to put a file named 'menu.Lst' in that directory containing:
"
Timeout 30
Default 0

Title Boot From ISO File
Root (hd0,0)
Kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz0 root=/dev/hda1
Initrd /isolinux/initrd.Gz
"
-Setup grub
#cd ../../.. && umount hd
#grub
Grub> root (hd0,0)
Grub> setup (hd0,0)
Grub> quit

-Reboot and it should work









-reply by LeavingEntropia

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burn_iso2HD
Burn Iso To Hd?

Replying to iGuest

Funny I stumbled across this

Tonight I was rebuilding an older pc my cd/dvd drive went out, for whatever reason...Curiosity...Laziness..I figured if I could extract my iso file (on disk)to an external drive(on disk) and make it bootable I would be able to keep going , I know there is another million ways to keep going but I'm stubborn and wanted to see if I could make the external hd bootable with my choice if iso downloaded via the net basically I want to do exactly what you (iguest ) and (bakr_2k5)suggested.

I used the same search terms as bakr_2k5 original post "burn iso to hd" for lack of a better search and got this forum

Thanks for the ideas guys! ill try to post back and let you know what I find out... Oh and for you guys that didn't understand the question he asked at first ...Try to open your minds...Don't be so negative


-reply by burn_iso2HD

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