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How To: Make Disk Images
Table of Contents:
- 1.0 Introduction
- 2.0 Why would you want to make a mini-image?
- 3.0 Downloading
- 4.0 Producing the images
- 5.0 Running the images
- 6.0 Copyright Information
- 7.0 Troubleshooting
- 8.0 The End
1.0 Introduction
Have you ever hated putting in ‘Disk One’ every time you wanted to play a game. I know I did with Battlefield 2. Upon reviewing the makeup of the Battlefield 2 disk I realized that it had a table of contents. This basically tells the computer were everything is. Now the table of contents is found at the beginning or very close to the beginning of the disk. Thus allowing you to make a ‘mini-image’ which is around 3-9 megabytes, instead of a full disk image which can be upwards of 650 megabytes. Mini-images are fairly easy to make and with this tutorial as your guide you will be playing your favorite games without the disk in about 5 minutes or less.
2.0 Why would you want to make a mini-image?
The benefits of not using the disk, far out way spending 5 minutes of your time to make them. Using a mini-image will:
-Speed up how fast the game will load. Putting in the CD means that the computer must read the CD in your CD drive which can be a slow process for both people with fast and slow drives. Your hard drive which is where the mini-image you will be creating lies, can be accessed much faster therefore speeding up load time.
-If you lose, damage, scratch, or anything else that can happen to a disk you don’t have to worry about it. You computer will no longer need disk one so you can safely store it where it will not get damaged.
3.0 Downloading
There are a few applications you will need to make your mini-image. The following are the needed items:
-Any version of Alcohol:This will be the product that makes the images. Alcohol is not a freeware application. If I was you just get the Alcohol 120% trial. More features and options that you might want to check out buy they will both get the job done.
-DAEMON Tools: This is a freeware program that allows you to run the mini-image. You can run the images off of Alcohol but if you have the trial you can only run it for 30 days, and Alcohol uses more system recourses. So the smarter way to go is download this freeware and run it from DAEMON.
Note: The newer versions of DAEMON (Version 4) have extra applications on them. These can easily be removed from the add/remove control panel. I strongly advidse you to use Version 4 due to the bug fixes.
4.0 Producing the images
This is a moderately tough part.
- Put your Disk One into your CD drive and open up whatever version of alcohol you downloaded
- Once in Alcohol go to the ‘Image-making wizard’ Follow the steps they are self explanatory.
- It should start reading the disk and making an image of it.
- IMPORTANT STEP – After about 2-3 errors stop the scan. It will then ask you if you want to delete the uncompleted image files, click "No"
- In the wizard you set a place where the image was saved to. Open up explorer and find your files. There should be 2 files one with a suffix .mds and one with a suffix .mdf, both are needed. If you like the spot where these are saved than leave them if not. Make another folder and move them to wherever you like. It’s a good idea to get them where you want before you run the image so you don’t run into problems down the road.
5.0 Running the images
With DAEMON Tools installed on your machine Running or ‘Mounting’ the image take a matter of seconds.
- If you haven’t already, make sure DAEMON tools if running. You will no this when there is an icon in your taskbar that is red and when hovering above it says DAEMON tools.
- Right Click on this and go into Virtual CD/DVD Drive emulation. Then go down to set the number of drives. If you plan on doing this one more than one CD change it so it fits your needs.
- Now in Virtual CD/DVD Drive emulation go to your Drive (Mine was called Drive G) and go to ‘Mount-Image’ Navigate to were you saved your mini-images and then double click on the one that shows up. There should only be one of your 2 files being shown (the one with a suffix of .mds)
6.0 Copyright information
This is a little topic that is very important. Using this tutorial, you can take your friends disk and make a copy of it. That is illegal. This tutorial is only for people who have purchased their copy of whatever game they want to make a mini-image of. So, do not use this tutorial if you do not own a copy of whatever game your making a mini-image of.
Alcohol 120% and Alcohol 52% are registered trademarks of Alcohol-Soft (http://www.alcohol-soft.com/).
DAEMON Tools is a registered trademark of Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/announcements.php)
7.0 Troubleshooting
Having trouble look here.
It doesn’t work! What did I do wrong?
There are many problems that could have gone wrong. The most common are:
- You stopped the image making process to soon
- You are trying to make a mini-image of a disk that needs a special emulation (Check here for all the games and what emulation they require)
- You tried to make a mini-image of a DVD
8.0 The End - Congratulations!
Congratulations! Hopefully you have gotten your mini-image to work and your now playing your game without the disk one. I hope this has been helpful to you and look for more of my tutorials soon to come.
This tutorial was made by Greg Rosen, This may not be copied or posted on another site with out my permission and/or consent. This tutorial is posted in GamerNode and TotalBF2
© Greg Rosen
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