Ripping a CD and use the file as "virtual CD drive"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Agoston Bejo
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A

Agoston Bejo

Please tell me if there are more appropriate groups for this question.

I was wondering if I could somehow rip the whole CD into an ISO file or
something, then use it as some "virtual CD drive". This would definitely
solve my speed problems, I think.

What started me thinking is that I would like to play an old game which runs
from CD, but is damn slow. Every
time the scene changes, it loads a new song from the CD, and this takes long
(also on my 2,4GHz computer, with a 52x LG CD reader). It doesn't use
ordinary files, but ordinary CD tracks for the music. (These don't show in
the file system.) So simply copying the contents of the CD to the
winchester and running the game from there doesn't work.

Any ideas? (Or at least where to look after a solution?)

Thx
 
Agoston said:
Please tell me if there are more appropriate groups for this question.

I was wondering if I could somehow rip the whole CD into an ISO file
or something, then use it as some "virtual CD drive". This would
definitely solve my speed problems, I think.

What started me thinking is that I would like to play an old game
which runs from CD, but is damn slow. Every
time the scene changes, it loads a new song from the CD, and this
takes long (also on my 2,4GHz computer, with a 52x LG CD reader). It
doesn't use ordinary files, but ordinary CD tracks for the music.
(These don't show in the file system.) So simply copying the contents
of the CD to the winchester and running the game from there doesn't
work.

Any ideas? (Or at least where to look after a solution?)

Thx
Click to expand...

See my answer to your first post.

Malke
 
I have had good luck with a a FREE virtual CD "drive" by Circle One:

http://www.circleofone.com/

Once installed, it creates a saoftware "device" that looks like a CD drive
to windows explorer. It places an icon in the system tray with right-click
options to do things like make a virtual CD image from a real CD, insert a
virtual CD, eject a virtual CD. The images are not ISO format. Rather,
they are a compressed format unique to this virtual CD drive.

I encountered only two oddities: The first is that some programs insist
that they be played on the same drive letter from which they were installed.
If you have that problem, just uninstall the program and re-install it from
the virtual CD. The second is that my external USB CD writer is NOT
recognized as a CD writer, if the virtual CD drive is active. I need to use
the XP device manager to "disable" the virtual CD drive, before the real CD
drive will write. (It reads fine, even with the virtual drive active.) I
have found that if the external drive is attached BEFORE I enable the
virtual drive, then I can just use the device manager to toggle the virtual
drive enable/disable. But, if the external drive is NOT attached, then I
also need to warm boot the PC. An internal drve is always "attached", so if
you have one of those, this oddity boils down to the simple toggle case
without any rebooting. My external DVD drive behaves just like the external
CD drive.

The one onther (minor) limitation is that this virtual CD drive will not
work on DVDs. I have some map programs that come on one DVD or several CDs.
The single DVD is more convenient, but can not be converted to a virtual CD
image.
 
There are plenty of programs out there that will make an
exact copy of your cd right onto your HD in .iso format
and also have virtual cd drivers be able to read them.

Alcohol 120% (makes .iso to HD, Plus has virtual cd drives)
CloneCD (makes files to hd, plus virtual cd drives)

I also think the makers of clonecd (Slysoft) released a
free virtual cd drive so that you can read any .iso format
on the HD and play back from the HD as if it was a CD Rom.

Check out download.com or softseek.com for the download
links. I do not know the authors websites..it's been a
while since I used them but I do highly recommend them.

...clownz
 
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