Slightly OT - Virtual Filesystems under Windows?

Jayson Smith ratguy at bellsouth.net
Thu May 19 02:52:25 EDT 2005


Hi,
I know this is off-topic, but I know this can be done under Linux using the
Loopback device, so I'm wondering if a hopefully free and easy equivalent
exists under Win32 systems.  I don't need encryption so products like
Bestcrypt and Scramdisk seem like overkill to me.  Here's my problem.
I have 3.6 gigabytes of MP3 files in many subdirectories under one main
directory, which I wish to burn to DVD.  Unfortunately, many of the
filenames and/or pathnames are too long for the UDF or Joliet filesystems
used on CD's and DVD's.
My solution.
If I could make a Fat32 filesystem in a file on my Windows machine and mount
it as a virtual drive, I could then copy the MP3s over to this virtual
filesystem.  Then I could burn that and the tool to mount it onto a DVD.  If
forced to use encryption software I'd put in a really dumb, easily guessable
password and include a text file on the DVD which contains the password, in
case I ever forgot it.  Security isn't an issue here, so once again products
like Bestcrypt seem like overkill.  Does anybody know of an equivalent of
/dev/loop for Windows?  What I'm wanting to do is to make, say, a FAT32
filesystem in c:\myfat32.dsk, let's say.  Then use some tool to mount that
as, say, drive X:.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Jayson.





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