[ale] NewbieQ: What image file format to burn a data DVD?

[Michael B. Trausch]

Mills, John M. wrote:
> ALErs -
> 
> I would like to make a disk-image file and burn it to a DVD that I could
> then mount on other Win and/or Lin systems' DVD-ROM drives. Content is a
> Win32 file system of about 3 Gby.
> 
> Is ISO9660 format usable this way (using 'mkisofs'), or is there some
> program analogous to 'mkisofs' that I should use to make such an image file?
> Will typical Win32 DVD-burning software handle such an image file?
> 
> Any guidance to a beginner appreciated.
> 
> TIA.
>  - John Mills
> 

That is a very interesting question.  I'd suspect that you'd be able to
do so, but I'm not entirely sure.  I'm not sure that typical Windows
programs would be able to burn the image, because they assume that
anything that ends in .iso is an ISO9660 image and tries to burn it as
such.  You may be able to do it with .BIN/.CUE or some other way of
using raw image files.

The best bet would be to try doing it by creating a file, creating a
filesystem within that file, and going from there.  I'm not sure of the
details of how it'd be looked at, but I'd assume that you could use a
similar-to-floppy-image format file (i.e., without an MBR and partition
table and all of that happy stuff), but I could be wrong.

Also, I'm not sure how to create an FAT32 filesystem in an image file...
mkfs.msdos does FAT16, IIRC.  Another problem with FAT is that it
requires geometry information specific to the size of the image that you
are using.

	Good luck,
	Michael

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                               <fd0man at gmail.com>
Website: http://fd0man.chadeux.net/     Jabber: mtrausch at jabber.com
Phone: +1-(678)-522-7934              FAX (US Only): 1-866-806-4647
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