Mount network folder

[rafael]

Hi!

I can start with that this suggestion is similar to nick_br's "Let us mount a mapped network drive!". I made this thread because I'd like to explain myself and the need for this feature in daemon tools.

I work at a gaming cafè in Oslo, Norway. Because of all the paranoia around warez and so in the gaming industry you all probably know by now that 99.99% out of all the games on the market requires a CD in the computer to play the game. This makes things at work somewhat hard. First of all because people need to put in the CD every time they want to play any game. Secondly because some people steal.
Before we started this business we knew that the solution to this problem would to mount single images on the computer so that they don't need to put in the cds to play and they can't steal the games we've bought.

I thought that maybe using the built-in 'map network drive'-feature in windows would be a solution, but I was wrong. I KNOW that daemon-tool is the PERFECT tool for us, simply because it has all the features we need (except the one I'm requesting).

What I would like is to decide to mount a network path .e.g. \\server\callofduty. Where we have a mounted the CoD image on a linux-server for instance. I've no programming experience, so I have no idea if this would be troublesome for the developers of Daemon-Tools.

Is there any possibility to see this feature in the future version of daemon-tools?


Thanks for listening,
- Rafael Moe

[DevX]

Daemon can mount network images via UNC naming convention.
Try to do it via command line. eg.
daemon.exe -mount 0," \\MYSERVER\MyFolder\abcd.mds"

[rafael]

Hmmm... That's too hard. What if a user would like to mount another image, for another game for instance?

Could it be possible to mount an image over network?
If yes, would that take a lot of the networks capability?

We have a 100MBPS in LAN.

[scruffinman]

Um.... yes. it's very easy. I have 5 comps at my house, and all my images on one central computer.

Steps:

1) either enable sharing on the folder with your images, or have everyone map a network drive to the folder
2) select mount image options and go the select image dialog
3a)if you everyone mapped the drive, have them go to the drive and mount it, just like they would any other image off a local hard drive
3b)if you just shared the folder, then everyone must browse through Network Neighborhood and find the images in the central computer.

This is incredibly easy and intuitive. The first time I ever used Daemon-Tools was for mounting over a network.

And Yes, it will use the networks max capacity..... but then again, that really depends on the networking environment.

If you are in a pure switching environment (E.G. Switches and Routers) The you will be fine, it will only soak up the bandwith between the computer mounting the image and the computer serving th image.

If you are in an environment that uses Hubs as central points.... then you will RAPE everyones bandwidth, simply because hubs are stupid and forward everydata packet to every port. Switched switch them to specific users.

The ideal configuration would be to have the computer with the images to have a Gigabit connection on a PCI-X Bus, with all the leecing computers on standard 100Mbps Connections.... But not many people have that luxury...

[m4a2t0t]

all you have to do is store the images on a network server(or any PC);
create a share for the folder. right click on my computer and map a network drive to the folder you just ahared( you can do this on every PC or write a script to mount the drive at startup , i have this if you want). Now all you have to do is tell the users to look in the Zwhateva u mapped it as) drive under my computer for the images

[CapJack]

Confirmation

Yes, it works; and if you want Windows to automatically mount the network drive/directory at startup, just check the appropriate checkbox the first time you mount this network drive/directory.
I know of a school using DT on a pedagogical network, now for years..:wink: