IMDISK by Olof Lagerkvist, Beyond FILEDISK and VDK External links Rating Options

[was_jaclaz]

I received a mail by Olof Lagerkvist, the author of the newish IMDISK driver which, by explicit permission, reproduce here in parts:

I would just like to inform you about that the project has been updated recently. Some new functions have been added such as extending the size of a mounted virtual disk, virtual removable media disks and graphical user interfaces such as a Control Panel applet and context menus in Windows Explorer. Simple API functions are now exported so that a developer with the help of a .h and a .lib file can mount/dismount virtual disks directly from within applications. Should also be fairly easy to build .cmd scripts with the command line interface.

The I/O redirect functionality has undergone a major design change and it is now much more CPU-effective. It is possible to redirect I/O requests for the virtual disk over TCP/IP or Named Pipe so that the actual storage for the virtual disk can be on another computer or handled by another application.

The official page of the project is this one:
http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html
please update your old bookmarks, if any.

There are also lots of other ideas and half-way implemented and undocumented functionality, for example it is possible through registry settings to auto-start the driver when Windows starts up and let it automatically create a RAM-disk and pre-load it with the contents of an image file.

Besides the above,really interesting features, I want to underline the following:

I could create some sort of wish-list or something and possibly include some descriptions of these so long undocumented features, but I am searching for a forum where such a project can reach interested and possibly participating people.

Of course I offered Boot-land as a possible such forum board, inviting Olof to join and eventually give him some "dedicated" space, like we already have for tftp32 and Winimize.

I hope that he will accept my offer and soon join us, however all members interested in the above software is invited to test the new release and submit here questions, suggestions and ideas.

I am going to "sticky" this for a few days, giving it some better visibility......

UPDATE:
Olof joined us and project has it's own new place on the board.

For those wondering WHAT Filedisk and VDK are, reference to them and some more similar apps is here:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/RAMdisk-an...vers-t1507.html

jaclaz

[Nuno Brito]

These are good news - I also like Olof's developments.

If needed, where would you recommend a new sub-forum and wich name to use?

Of course that we already have a Program support and discussion forum where Olof is very welcome to post a new topic refering to each new version/published program.



I've never tested imdisk, but this sounds a promissing feature:

The I/O redirect functionality has undergone a major design change and it is now much more CPU-effective. It is possible to redirect I/O requests for the virtual disk over TCP/IP or Named Pipe so that the actual storage for the virtual disk can be on another computer or handled by another application.

[Olof Lagerkvist]

Hi everyone,

I have read some of the discussions on this forum and thought that discussion about some of my projects, especially ImDisk, would fit quite well here.

There have been lots of e-mail with ideas about functions to add, such as support for mounting VMWare/Virtual PC virtual disk files and IMZ compressed images, encryption, easier remote mounting over TCP/IP, support for virtual audio CD:s, "virtual CD-burning", full read/write support for virtual DVD+RW media and lots of more. It would be next to impossible for me to add all functions to it myself so I would like to get a feeling about which functions are of highest interest.

As it is right now, lots of work has been done to make the driver easy to extend with other modules, both for custom storage support and for mounting/unmounting. This might make it possible for people not very used to writing driver code be able to extend the driver.

It is also no problem to create "commercialized spin-offs", with partly or fully protected code. There are some of that kind already with for example very special storage for the virtual disks. So, it is no problem to add closed-source modules either.

[Nuno Brito]

Hi Olof - welcome to our community!

Thanks for releasing your applications as freeware - It has been almost a year since Jaclaz first recommended your site: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=181

Your work is really interesting and we sure appreciate tools like ImDisk wich are very useful for our projects.

A new sub-forum can be added under the Programs category where you will be able to organize discussions and others give feedback about your tools (including myself..) - what do you think?

[MedEvil]

@jaclaz
I know what imDisk does. but could you give me an eyample, where it would be useful for PE purposes?

[was_jaclaz]

@jaclaz
I know what imDisk does. but could you give me an eyample, where it would be useful for PE purposes?

It's already here:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1655
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...=1580&st=40
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1441

Medevil, Medevil, bad boy, you should pay more attention....



jaclaz

[Oleg_II]

Hi jaclaz,
Still waiting for a free solution to boot my W2k into RAM Could you ask the author if this driver can be used for this?

Just saw Olof is also here

[Alexei]

Hi everyone,

I have read some of the discussions on this forum and thought that discussion about some of my projects, especially ImDisk, would fit quite well here.
...

Hi Olof,
1) I'm sorry, it may be already discussed, but is it possible to mount virtual disk at very early stages of boot process?
I want it to be ready when NT switches from accessing HDD via BIOS Int 13 to using HDD drivers.
2) Also, there is interesting product http://www.programurl.com/usb-to-ethernet-connector.htm though it's not freeware
I'd like to have same thing for HDD, i.e. "physical drive over ethernet". Is it hard to implement?
Thanks in advance,
Alexei

[was_jaclaz]

OK, I did some testing of IMDISK, very preliminary, but enough to get an idea of the basic workings.

Since Olof asked for it, the poor guy most probably didn't fully envision the consequences of that action , here are my suggestions:

1) FEATURE REQUESTS (IMPORTANT):
a. possibility to specify an offset for the bootsector counted in either bytes or sectors (better) from the start of the image file to the location of the bootsector.
this will allow, besides providing a workaround for point #2)a below, a way to mount a number of non-RAW images, most notably SDI, VMDK, Virtualbox and QEMU ones (only the fixed-size type), see this for a quick reference:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...19155&st=22
b. BE VERY CAREFUL, IMDISK will not recognize an image with a MBR, and thus once it is mounted, if you open the drive in Explorer it will prompt for FORMATTING it.
c. the IMDISK driver, UNLIKE filedisk and VDK, appears not create a \\.\PHYSICALDRIVEx link, thus this prevents direct access to it via a DISK EDITOR if not through the mounted letter.

2) FEATURE REQUESTS (that would be nice)
a. possibility, like VDK already does, to recognize and mount full hard-disk images, i.e. those with a MBR and hidden sectors, or, at least, have a dialog like WINIMAGE has to choose which partition to connect to
b. remove, switched by the .iso extension?, the right click option to "Mount as writeable IMDISK Virtual Disk" for .iso images
c. autodetect, from size of file?, 1.44 and 2.88 Floppy images and mount them starting with B: letter

3) REQUEST FOR DOCS
a. it seems I cannot find ANY docs/examples/howtos for the non-basic functions.

4) Bugs or however reports of something strange
a. Right click menu, it seems like IMDISK thinks that EVERY drive is an IMDISK drive, and of course it cannot unmount a non-IMDISK one
b. file association appear to be a bit messy or however non-existant, i.e. you can tell IMDISK to mount ANY file with right click (and if the file is not recognized a prompt for formatting the drive once opened in Explorer will pop up, see above), additionally a floppy image named "something.bin" was mounted by IMDISK as a CDROM drive

I'll have to find the time to do some more testing, this thingy appears to work itherwise flawlessly

A bit, but not much off-topic:

I'd like to have same thing for HDD, i.e. "physical drive over ethernet". Is it hard to implement?

Alexei, just a crazy idea, which I just had and didn't have the time to even try, is the following:
1) httpdisk by Bo Branten:
http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/
2) hfs tiny webserver:
http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

I am testing just HFS right now and it appears like a real winner for a small project I am having a look at for a friend of mine, if the two work together, you could use http as the internal protocol, since HFS can allow only some IP addresses, it should be easy to "limit" it to intranet.

jaclaz

[Nuno Brito]

A new sub forum can be found here:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/ImDisk-f59.html