Jump to content











Photo
* * * * * 1 votes

News


  • This topic is locked This topic is locked
109 replies to this topic

#1 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 11 May 2007 - 02:08 PM

I just added the possibility to automatically use the first unused drive letter even when mounting virtual disks with the command line tool. For this to work, specify #: as drive letter.

Example:
imdisk -a -s 60M -m #:

http://www.ltr-data..../imdiskinst.exe


EDIT by jaclaz:
@all
Please, DO NOT REPLY on this thread, if you have questions, want to show your appreciation (or disgust :confused1: ) or whatever, about the news published here, start a new thread, quoting the News post by Olof.
Olof Lagerqvist is the ONLY one allowed to post in this thread, to make it become a sort of "change history" log for IMDISK.
Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

#2 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 11 May 2007 - 07:36 PM

I have now changed the behaviour of the context menu items in Windows Explorer. There is now only one menu item and that one brings up the "create new virtual disk" dialog before doing anything. This way I hope to reduce the risk of mounting files as a virtual disks by mistake as that could be dangerous and lead to destoryed contents of mounted files. This is good in another way too, because it makes all possible options available even when mounting an image file directly from Windows Explorer.

http://www.ltr-data..../imdiskinst.exe
http://www.ltr-data....mdisk_source.7z
(The actually modified source files are cpl\drvio.h, cpl\imdisk.cpp, cpl\rundll.c and imdisk.inf.)

#3 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 13 May 2007 - 07:39 PM

A little summary about what has been fixed lately, just to keep this thread as some kind of change-log.

* I have corrected auto-selection of geometry so that sector size of 512 bytes is selected for virtual hd and fd and 2048 for virtual cd. It is still possible to manually override the default settings using the -S parameter on the command line. Thanks paraglider for notifying me about this.

* The buttons in the Control Panel applet have been re-ordered like TheHive suggested and the 'Done' button is renamed to 'Close'.

* Corrected some very difficult-to-understand or just mistyped texts :confused1: in the help text displayed when imdisk.exe is run without parameters (or when incompatible or bad syntax is used).

* All numeric parameters to imdisk.exe are now checked so that they are really numeric. Earlier it was possible, although confusing, to type for example imdisk -d -u F:. Because -u takes a device number as parameter it translated F: into a number and because F: is not a number it got zero and removed device number zero even if that was not actually F:... There was a risk that users removed the wrong device in such cases.

#4 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 14 May 2007 - 02:19 PM

I have been trying to implement some of the features requested in this forum and the 911cd forum lately. Time has come for a beta release. Version number of this beta is 1.0.3, latest stable release is still 1.0.2.

Some of the changes so far:

* It is now possible to extend the size of RAM-disks too. However note that the resizing of RAM-disks may take a long time because the driver needs to allocate a new block of memory with the new size, copy the contents of the old memory block to the new one and then release the old block. This means that RAM and CPU usage may be very high during the resize operation.

* The behaviour when creating a RAM-disk pre-loaded with an image file has changed so that the loading of the image file into the RAM-disk memory block is done after control has returned to the caller but before the driver actually starts service I/O requests for the virtual disk. This means that when a RAM-disk with pre-loaded image file is created from for example a batch file the batch file does no longer hang waiting for the RAM-disk to be completely loaded with the image file.

* It is now possible to format virtual disks directly from the Control Panel applet.

* When a new virtual disk is created using the command line tool imdisk.exe it is now possible to have the newly created virtual disk automatically formatted. This is implemented by imdisk.exe calling format.com after virtual disk creation. The new -p command line option is used for specifying additional parameters to the format.com command line, such as switches for specifying filesystem, volume label etc. Type imdisk.exe without parameters for more information about this new option.

* Support has been added for mounting image files and specifying offset where the disk partition image begins within the image file. The new -b command line option is used for this.

* It is now possible to double-click on a virtual disk in the list in the Control Panel applet to open the virtual disk root in a Windows Explorer window.

You can download this beta release here:
http://www.ltr-data....skinst_beta.exe

(The link http://www.ltr-data..../imdiskinst.exe is still the old 1.0.2 release.)

Special note about upgrading:

The new release has a new version number and some of the communication between driver and control applications has changed so that for example old version's command line tool is not compatible with this new driver version. If you already have an old version of ImDisk on your computer and upgrade to this new version and don't want to restart your computer after upgrade, make sure that the driver is not in use before upgrading. Also stop the driver so that the new version will be loaded after the upgrade.

To upgrade in a 'reboot-free' way:
* Open a Command Prompt.
* Type imdisk -l. If it tells you that the driver is not loaded then you can just upgrade and ignore the rest of this guide.
* If the response is a list of numbers you still have virtual disks loaded. Delete them, either from command line or the Control Panel applet. Return to the Command Prompt and type imdisk -l, it should now display the text No virtual disks..
* Type net stop imdisk to unload the driver.
* Now you are ready to run the new install package to upgrade the driver!

Note that this new release is a beta-release so far and should not yet be used in production and that this beta is published only here at boot-land. When it has been tested a couple of days I will replace the old version on my website with this new version.

Happy testing!

#5 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 15 May 2007 - 10:35 PM

Two small changes has been done to the current beta so far.

* It is now possible to specify a per cent sign % as a suffix to the size parameter, -s on the command line. It means percentage of free physical memory which could be useful when creating RAM-disks. For example -s 20% creates a RAM-disk of 20 per cents of the size of currently free physical memory. (Note that you will need double per cent signs if you are using this syntax in a batch file.) Thanks to 'cdob' at 911cd.net for this idea.

* A refresh command has been added to the Control Panel applet. While the list of current virtual disks has keyboard focus it is now possible to press F5 to refresh the list. This is useful when virtual disks are added or removed from the command line or directly from Windows Explorer while the Control Panel applet is open. Thanks to 'paraglider' for this idea.

The current beta can be downloaded here: http://www.ltr-data....skinst_beta.exe

I have not found any bugs myself and have not received any bug reports so I think I will publish it as the current stable release in a day or so.

#6 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 16 May 2007 - 02:47 PM

Two more changes to the current beta.

* Corrected and added virtual disk geometries for some old floppy sizes. Thanks to 'cdob' at 911cd.net.

* Added a new item to the context menu that is displayed when right-clicking a drive in Windows Explorer. The new menu is used to save the contents of a disk as an image file.

The current beta can be downloaded here: http://www.ltr-data....skinst_beta.exe

#7 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 16 May 2007 - 07:38 PM

The 1.0.3 version is now released as current stable release. The old version 1.0.2 is still available for download at http://www.ltr-data....kinst_1-0-2.exe in case someone wants to download it. This also means that the beta download url is no longer available.

#8 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 25 May 2007 - 11:42 AM

I have now added support for some more floppy disk sizes. All automatically supported floppy sizes are specified in the help text displayed when running imdisk.exe without parameters.

#9 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 29 May 2007 - 07:39 PM

Nothing new really, just a small bug-fix. When the menu item "Save disk contents as image file" on a drive icon in Windows Explorer was selected on a drive that was in use a message box was displayed asking wether or not to continue without dismounting the volume. The operation continued even if "Cancel" was selected in the message box. That is now corrected.

#10 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 30 May 2007 - 11:28 PM

I have now added an option to save the contents of a virtual disk as an image file from the Control Panel applet. It is still possible to do that directly from Windows Explorer too when right-clicking on a drive icon. That works on other kinds of disk drives than virtual drives too.

The new option in the Control Panel applet makes it possible to save an image even of a virtual disk with no drive letter assigned to it.

I felt like there was getting too many buttons in the Control Panel applet now so I decided to create a menu instead.

#11 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 31 May 2007 - 04:59 PM

Sherpya has ported ImDisk to amd64 and ia64 platforms. We would appreciate if people with 64-bit machines and OS could test these versions:

http://oss.netfarm.i...kinst_amd64.zip
http://oss.netfarm.i...skinst_ia64.zip

There is no fully automated install yet, but it should be possible to extract the correct zip file and right-click on imdisk.inf and select 'Install', or run install.cmd.

#12 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 03 June 2007 - 10:52 PM

* Added a "Filesystem" column to the list in the Control Panel applet.
* Corrected an error in the command line tool imdisk.exe. If the -p parameter was used with a virtual disk without a drive letter the program crashed. It now displays a message telling that a drive letter is required for the -p parameter to work.

#13 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 14 June 2007 - 12:10 AM

There have been some changes made to ImDisk recently.

* It is now possible to set or reset the media characteristics removable and read-only for existing virtual disks.

* I/O delays have been removed from the I/O functions for virtual memory backed virtual disks. This means that the write performance for RAM-disks should be much better now.

#14 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 08 July 2007 - 01:38 PM

Two minor changes has been made to ImDisk.

* The window style for the Control Panel applet has been changed so that it is now an "application window" and with a minimize button. This means that it shows up on the taskbar and can be minimized as well.
* The image size visualization for some common floppy sizes are now changed in the Control Panel applet to the more commonly used "thousands of KB". This is done for the floppy sizes 2,880 KB, 1,722 KB, 1,680 KB, 1,440 KB and 1,200 KB.

#15 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 13 July 2007 - 01:23 AM

Got an e-mail from Sebastian Gottschalk who had found two buffer over-runs, one in the driver code that handles pre-loading of virtual devices from registry settings. (This could be seriously bad with a bit of bad luck.) I have fixed those now.

#16 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 06 September 2007 - 02:15 PM

I have made some changes to the "Mount new" dialog in the Control Panel applet. Ideas by "tonedeaf" in the 911-cd forums.

#17 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 16 October 2007 - 06:39 PM

Two changes:
* Fixed an error in the "mount new" dialog in the Control Panel applet. The unit selection radio buttons for offset in image files did not work correctly.
* Added broadcasting of WM_DEVICECHANGE messages when devices are about to be removed as an attempt to resolve this issue: TortoiseSVN incompatibility issue. This has caused that it has not been possible to remove ImDisk virtual drives on computers running such cache/indexing software.

#18 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 24 November 2007 - 06:52 PM

I have now changed the icons in the Control Panel applet and added a right-click context menu to the device list.

#19 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 15 February 2008 - 08:24 PM

It is now possible to type a negative size value on the command line when creating a virtual disk. This means that the size of the virtual disk will be the amount of free physical memory minus this value. This is useful when creating large RAM-disks where the size should depend on the amount of free memory.

#20 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 04 November 2008 - 08:25 AM

Release 1.0.4. Added a new option to the command line tool imdisk.exe. It is now possible to force removal of in-use devices by specifying -D instead of -d on the command line.

#21 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 23 November 2008 - 11:54 AM

Release 1.1.0

* The user interface now supports auto-selecting values for offset and size by reading partition table in raw hard disk images. This makes it a lot easier to mount a partition within a hard disk image file. For the command line tool a new switch -v has been added used to select which partition to mount.

* The user interface also supports auto-selecting offset when mounting Nero .nrg and Microsoft .sdi image files. With the command line tool imdisk.exe the switch -b with parameter auto is used for this.

The new version is as usually available at: http://www.ltr-data..../imdiskinst.exe
The old 1.0.4 version is available at: http://www.ltr-data....kinst_1-0-4.exe

#22 was_jaclaz

was_jaclaz

    Finder

  • Advanced user
  • 7101 posts
  • Location:Gone in the mist
  •  
    Italy

Posted 23 November 2008 - 01:32 PM

* The user interface now supports auto-selecting values for offset and size by reading partition table in raw hard disk images. This makes it a lot easier to mount a partition within a hard disk image file. For the command line tool a new switch -v has been added used to select which partition to mount.

:) :) :( :) :( :(

In due time, patience always pays:
http://www.boot-land...?...c=2072&st=8

Though I have peeled off the 6 and 3 numeric keys :( and had to change my keyboard in the meantime....
:)

:(

Thanks a bunch! :(

jaclaz

#23 dossi

dossi
  • Members
  • 9 posts
  •  
    Germany

Posted 24 November 2008 - 07:09 AM

Cool !

Seems to work ... as far as I can tell at the moment, that is.

NICE !

... sorry to be pesky about it ... but, ... ehrm ...

TFS ? (*grin*)

Thanks for this excellent tool.

/dossi

#24 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 26 November 2008 - 10:17 AM

Release 1.1.1
* Small change: Nero images .nrg are now automatically detected as CD/DVD images.

#25 Olof Lagerkvist

Olof Lagerkvist

    Gold Member

  • Developer
  • 1448 posts
  • Location:Borås, Sweden
  •  
    Sweden

Posted 02 December 2008 - 10:51 AM

Release 1.1.2
* Corrected some problems with the auto-detection of master boot records in image files.
* Added a new feature where the driver sets a flag when a virtual disk has been written to. This flag can be cleared with the imdisk -e -o saved command and is shown for example with imdisk -l -m R: or similar. This should make it possible to script a solution where a RAM disk could be saved to an image file if it has been modified. Thanks to Zero3K for suggesting this feature.




1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users