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Update 25 Feb 2010
Release 1.2.4 of ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver. When registry settings where setup for the driver to auto-create a virtual disk when driver is loaded, specified drive letter was not assigned for the device. This has now been corrected.
All file dates are in ISO date format, YYYY-MM-DD. This makes the list easier to sort.
ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver - Latest version 1.2.4 built 25 Feb 2010
ImDisk is a virtual disk driver for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008. It can create virtual hard disk, floppy or CD/DVD drives using image files or system memory. The install package installs a console-mode control program called imdisk.exe and a Control Panel applet. After install is finished, type imdisk without parameters for syntax help or double click the ImDisk icon in the Control Panel. It also adds a menu item in Windows Explorer so that you can right-click on a file to mount it as a virtual disk drive. Users of mdconfig in FreeBSD will probably be familiar with the command line syntax of imdisk.exe. The driver, service and control program can be uninstalled using the Add/Remove programs applet in the Control Panel. No reboot is required for installing or uninstalling.
The install package also contains a user-mode helper service that enables the virtual disk driver to forward I/O requests to other computers on the network. This makes it possible to boot a machine with NTFS partitions with a *nix Live-CD and use the included devio tool to let ImDisk on another computer running Windows on the network mount the NTFS partition on the machine you booted with the *nix Live-CD. This way you can recover information and even run chkdsk on drives on machines where Windows does not boot. I am working on a Live CD image with devio and other useful things for this pre-loaded. There are also instructions about how to use devio under Windows on Claus Valca's blog.
Download screenshot - 43.5 KB
Download the install package - 283 KB, works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.
http://www.ltr-data.se/files/imdiskinst.exe
About the install package
The install package is created using 7-zip sfx stubs and includes an .inf install script. No reboot is required after installing or uninstalling. The install package works on Windows NT 3.51/NT 4.0/2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista/Server 2008, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
Special note for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7
On Vista and Server 2008 you need to either turn off UAC, User Access Control, or setup the driver to auto-load on system startup. Setting the driver to auto-start is recommended.
About turning off UAC: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/09/20/763275.aspx
-- or --
Set the ImDisk driver to auto-load at Command Prompt: sc config imdisk start= auto
or set the ImDisk driver to auto-load using GUI: Open Device Manager, View -> Show hidden devices. Under "Non-plug-and-play devices" right-click ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver and select properties. On the "Driver" tab, change start type to Automatic.
Using either solution it should work after next reboot.
64-bit versions share source code with the 32-bit version. All features and most limitations are the same in the 64-bit and 32-bit versions. One notable difference however is that the 64-bit versions do not have any practical size limits for RAM disks.
64 bit drivers are now digitally signed with a certificate trusted by Microsoft.
This means that ImDisk now works Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 even without running it testsigning mode.
Special note for Windows NT 3.51
The .inf file used in the install process is not compatible with Windows NT 3.51. To install on NT 3.51 you can extract the files in the packages using 7-zip and then manually create the driver keys in the registry or using a SCM control tool like sc.exe in the Windows NT Resource Kit. On later versions of Windows you just run the package and it will install everything automatically.
Source code
Source code for all of ImDisk, including a server-part for *nix like systems, is available as a 7-zip compressed file here (94 KB). The Windows parts of the source code can be built in the Windows 2000 build environemt in the latest WDK and the *nix parts can be built with gcc. If you want to call functions for creating/removing/querying virtual disks from your own program you can #include the file inc\imdisk.h in your C/C++ source files and link the cpl\i386\imdisk.lib library. If you would like information about how to write compatible server-end software you can take a look at the I/O packet structures in inc\imdproxy.h.
License
I have received some e-mails with questions wether or not it is okay to include this driver in a commercial product. The answer is yes, just like all other tools I publish here. However, note that a few lines of code are under the GNU GPL license, this is basically the parts related to floppy emulation. Some of the driver code is also ported to Windows NT from the FreeBSD 'md' driver.
Forum
A new sub-forum has been started at the boot-land forum. This new sub-forum is for discussions about ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver and other tools published here.
[ 本帖最后由 0cat0 于 2010-2-27 09:43 编辑 ] |
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