Mounting an image

Harlan,
you can mount in vdk raw image,whithout converting image to vmdk.

Marat,

I don't know…I haven't tried. Why don't you try it and let us know? I know I'd greatly appreciate it if you did.

Thanks,

Harlan

Harlan,
sorry for my bad english.
Vdk can mount raw image. )

Great…can you share the process/command line?

yes
for example

vdk view D\EVIDENCE_LOCKER\HASHSETS.001

Failed to decide type of 'd\evidence_locker\hashsets.001'.
Open as a simple sector image file.
Image Name hashsets
Disk Capacity 2097152 sectors (1024 MB)
Number Of Files 1

Type Size Path
——- ——- —-
FLAT 2097152 d\evidence_locker\hashsets.001

Partitions
# Start Sector Length in sectors Type
– ———— ——————— —-
0 0 2097152 ( 1024 MB) NTFS

and

vdk open * D\EVIDENCE_LOCKER\HASHSETS.001 /WB /LG
/WB write block
/LG G-drive letter

Marat,

Thanks! I'm glad you shared that…that's the kind of thing the community needs more of.

H

Harlan,

there is also a GUI for VDK that works fairly well. I've used it quite effectively in the past, and it can be found on http//petruska.stardock.net/Software/VMware.html where you can find also other useful VMWare-related disk manipulation software.

Speaking of which, sometimes (I would say about 20% of the times) I've had stability problems when using the VDK driver on a Windows XP SP2 machine, that crashed (with the BSOD) when I unmounted a dd image. Did you experience similar problems?

Cheers,
– Cosimo

cosimo,

I've had stability problems when using the VDK driver on a Windows XP SP2 machine, that crashed (with the BSOD) when I unmounted a dd image. Did you experience similar problems?

I am used vdk long time and dont have any problems on Windows XP SP2.

Hallo,
I am the author of the everyday increasingly outdated small pseudo-GUI for VDK.EXE you can find here
http//home.graffiti.net/jaclazgraffiti.net/Projects/VDM/vdm.html

I just want to let you know that a handy way to mount "dd-like" images is to use VMWare 2.00 .pln descriptor files, see this
http//www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=80281&st=1
This way the "dd-like" image can be mounted with the "correct" geometry, as VDK defaults normally to a 64/32 one.

To automatically create a .pln file descriptor for the image you have, you are free to "borrow" code from this other small batch of mines (MBRbatch/Mkimg)
http//www.boot-land.net/forums/MBRBatch-001-ALPHA-t3191.html

Moreover, there is a new Filesystem driver, IMDISK
http//www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html
http//www.boot-land.net/forums/ImDisk-f59.html
(you will need to specify a "hidden sectors" offset to mount "full" HD images)

Here is a thread where I try to collect all links I can find to Ramdisk/Filedisk drivers
http//www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1507

Finally, there are a number of absolutely FREEWARE "dd-like" tools for Windows, I use a lot dsfo/dsfi from the DSFOK toolkit
http//members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware/

But in this thread there are a few other options
http//www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16534

jaclaz

jaclaz,

I'm finding that the IMDisk utility keeps wanting to format the drive whenever I mount a dd image file as a drive. My goal is to open an image file ("image.dd") and mount it as an F\ drive, as read-only.