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mounting multisegmented mds files on different media
mounting multisegmented mds files on different media
Deamon Tools mounts *.mds files just dandy when it is accompanied with its *.i01, *.i02, etc. files in the same directory. It would be extremely handy if they didn't have to be on the same media or path. Perhaps it could ask for the path of the other *.i0* files during mounting rather than just failing. Is this possible?
More and more data comes on DVD-images and some of them are bigger then 4,7 GB so you can't burn a single ISO of this size to a DVD-R. Creating a multi-ISO with DVD-Decrypter is easy, but it is very time consuming if you have to copy back all files to HDD before you can mount it.
This question has been asked before sometimes, but the guys never got an answer if this is possible or not.
Location of all segments is specified inside MDS. Currently it is in the form *.md1, *.md2 etc wich means same folder. If you had the way to specify full location there instead of this then Daemon would mount it automatically. If you want to be asked about each file then completely new interface will be needed - note that daemon.exe does NOT know that image has multiple segments (and it has no knowledge about images formats at all);
it just mounts image of any kind (mds, ccd etc.) - it is task of daemon.dll to recognize segments and mount them properly. But it has no user interface, so no chance to ask about location of every segment. The only way to do what you want is to edit MDS on the fly with some 3rd pary program and feed it to Daemon.
it is possible if mds.spec is changed and GUI, which means, of course, a lot of work. So don't count on it, but theoretically it's possible, maybe some day it's there :wink:
A way to modify the MDS file would be fully sufficient for me, because I want to use this option in an automated way. I have allready tried to edit the MDS file with a HexEditor some weeks ago and it worked for changing the file names, but I had problems to get it to work with different drive-names. But it could be my fault.
Is there a specification of the MDS file format anywhere?
Or can you give me some information how the paths can be "reliable" modified in the MDS, so the hole structure won't break up?
Another way would be to use some sort of configuration file. A simple textfile that's opened by the application like all supported ISOs and only consists of the paths of the segmented ISO files. This data could then be used by the .dll to map everything right. This would be my prefered way. An automated modification of such file would be easy and it could be nicely integrated in my setup.
Doesn't the .dll allready have a kind of interaction with the desktop? For example if you mount an invalid image file, it's capable of displaying a message and asks for another file. Wouldn't it be also possible to bring up a file-dialog to ask for the next missing part? Actually I don't need this heavily, but it would be a nice feature for other users.
OMG - sounds like you're itching to develop an add-on
As I havent gotten around to fooling around with DVDs yet, this is something that I might want to know about in advance - save me problems when I finally arrive at that stage....
@corum666: What you most likely need to do is to create some temporary MDS file and feed it to daemon.dll for mounting.
But i will think how to automate the task with some configuration file.
Thank you very much. The benefit of such configuration file would also be, that additional features can be implemented. For example to support multisegment ISOs not only for ISO/MDS combinations. There are masses of "split programs" in the world to break a binary-file in several chunks. So the user could also split any supported file like CDI, NRG, CCD and so on to several chunks and mount them with such simple configuration file.
This would be extremly usefull for DVD-Games, so the user can burn them to CDs and directly mount the parts without the limitation to use ISO/MDS. Also he does not have to think about the splitting before he starts to rip and can use every image program.
OK, I found a way to do the wanted splitting over muliple drives now. Actually it's very easy. But I think the idea of the configuration file would make it even more perfect. But here is the way to do it:
1. I assume you allready have one big ISO on your HDD.
2. Get one of these nifty file-splitting tools. There are millions out there.
3. Split your ISO to the desired sized parts.
4. Burn or copy these parts wherever you want.
5. Now you have access to all the splitted parts somewhere on your system. Get DVD-Decrypter and use the function "Tools" -> "Create DVD MDS File..."
6. Press the "Add" button and set filetype to "all". Choose one splitted part and open it.
7. Repeat step 6. for every splitted part, so they all appear in the correct order in the list.
8. Tick the "Preserve Full Pathnames" checkbox and press "OK".
9. Save the new MDS somewhere.
Now you can open up this MDS with daemon.exe and and mount your splitted image.
You can also use DVD-Decrypter to directly rip the DVD and split it. I prefer to use an additional splitting tool, because it gives me more options to choose the size of the parts and I allready have many single ISOs on my HDD, that I can now split very fast. Also note that you have to do the steps 5 to 9 again, if you change the location or drive of any splitted part.
I want to write a script to automatically generate a .MDS file. I've found out all fields DVD-Decrypter writes in the .MDS so far, expect one:
At hex-offset 08CD is a value I can't identificate. Can someone give me a hint how this value can be generated?
Regards,
corum666
BTW: This splitted DVD ISO/MDS stuff works great so far. There is a tool called DVDIdle that's a kind of read ahead cache. This is very usefull to gain time for the spinning-up time of the next drive. With DVDIdle I get no dropout at the split between the two disks.
Does DAEMON-Tools allready have such kind of read ahead mechanism that could be maxed out to get the same functionality?
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