Burn Iso To Hd? Found on the net it IS possible but none explaining HOW to do it :-(

[iGuest 3]

I would recommend using a Live Linux CD of some sort so we have the necessary tools to do what is required.You want to setup GRUB on the hard drive to "pretend to boot off a CD", remember it's only faking Grub but we know it'll be using the Hard Drive.You need to create partitions, usually each size should be 700MB but if you want to save space or allow for more partitions, create them at the same size as the ISO files but allow for 1-8MB extra (unless you know how to exactly tell how many bytes you'll specifically need, but remember partitions are hard to be completely accurate down to the bytes.These partitions will be formatted as CD file system.We then use our CD Writing software to write these ISOs to those partitions, configure a grub menu so we have the ability to chose which CD we want to boot from, and that's why we fake grub to think it's booting from a CD because our file system suggests it's a CD we're using anyways.Maybe I need to show a step-by-step on this, but it'll take me a while to write it up as I don't have time to do a lot here.However, if you have ISO files, you could just boot from them, just the ability to mount an ISO at boot and using grub to boot from them should have been enough, but I guess that's another method I probably have to show as well.Cheers,MC

[rockershive 0]

hey i haven't tried burning an ISO onto a hard drive (call it mount, not burn). You can use Virtual Drives applications to mount ISO on a hard drive, it should be bootable if the ISO file you are mounting a bootable one. These apps can create temporary virtual drives (e.g. partition, CD/DVD drive) where you can place ISO files to be used on specific tasks.

[iGuest 3]

I have the same question

Burn Iso To Hd?

 

It is not too hard to understand: the whole idea is to "burn" (lacking a better term) an iso to an HD or HD partition so that that partition has the same files and boot sector as the iso.

 

-reply by Rodrigo Rollan

[iGuest 3]

I know what u mean

Burn Iso To Hd?

 

This is a rough guide to 'burn' an iso to a disk, it is a pretty advanced guide and the paths such as /dev/hda1 and (hd0,0) will have to be substituted with what is relivant to your system. Maybe the other users can refine this guide and make it easier to use for beginners, I could even make an interactive script if I could find the time.

 

Make an ext3 partition that can hold the iso, I did 1 gb just to be safe

Example:

#fdisk /dev/hda

...Make partition

 

-Mount the image and the hd

#mkdir hd && mount /dev/hda1 hd

#mkdir iso && mount -o loop image.Iso iso

 

-Copy all the files across

#cp iso/* hd/* -are

 

-Install grub files (yours may be in a different place)

#cd hd

#mkdir boot && cd boot && mkdir grub && cd grub

#cp /usr/lib/grub/i386*/* ./

 

-Use your favourite editor to put a file named 'menu.Lst' in that directory containing:

"

Timeout 30

Default 0

 

Title Boot From ISO File

Root (hd0,0)

Kernel /isolinux/vmlinuz0 root=/dev/hda1

Initrd /isolinux/initrd.Gz

"

-Setup grub

#cd ../../.. && umount hd

#grub

Grub> root (hd0,0)

Grub> setup (hd0,0)

Grub> quit

 

-Reboot and it should work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-reply by LeavingEntropia

[iGuest 3]

burn_iso2HD

Burn Iso To Hd?

 

Replying to iGuest

 

Funny I stumbled across this

 

Tonight I was rebuilding an older pc my cd/dvd drive went out, for whatever reason...Curiosity...Laziness..I figured if I could extract my iso file (on disk)to an external drive(on disk) and make it bootable I would be able to keep going , I know there is another million ways to keep going but I'm stubborn and wanted to see if I could make the external hd bootable with my choice if iso downloaded via the net basically I want to do exactly what you (iguest ) and (bakr_2k5)suggested.

 

I used the same search terms as bakr_2k5 original post "burn iso to hd" for lack of a better search and got this forum

 

Thanks for the ideas guys! ill try to post back and let you know what I find out... Oh and for you guys that didn't understand the question he asked at first ...Try to open your minds...Don't be so negative

 

 

-reply by burn_iso2HD

[docduke 0]

Yeah. Funny we all stumbled into this. I expect to take delivery tomorrow of a system that is designed for virtualization, so that this kind of thing can be easily examined. In the meantime, here are some fuzzy impressions I have about these issues:

 

1. An ISO image is both a data stream and a partition formatting specification.

2. In Linux, the "dd" command is the easy way (but dangerous!) to make an exact copy of a data stream.

3. The reason hard drives, USB drives, etc. have "device drivers" is that the OS wants to know not only what data is on the device, but how is it arranged? The time of only serial data storage (think magnetic tape) is long gone.

4. At least some of the virtualization software in use can boot directly from an ISO image anywhere: on a CD, on a USB or just in a file somewhere on a hard disk. In particular, there are utilities to get from an ISO image to a VMWare transfer image.

5. This stuff is partly black magic. Last night, I followed the directions for installing the System Rescue CD on a USB, and was unable to boot it. Instead, I copied the ISO image onto a CD, and successfully booted this image from a USB CD reader. The images were not the same (the instructions told how to modify the files for the USB boot), so in the future I intend to revisit this project and see exactly what has to be changed to go from a bootable CD image to a bootable USB "image" (more properly: file structure).

[iGuest 3]

Here some CaseBurn Iso To Hd?

1. I have a computer without CD/DVD-ROM,2. There are three Drives ( example : C: D: E: assume each can store 40GB ),3. In Drives D: stored a file WindowXP.Iso ( an Bootable Installer WindowXP )4. No such thing as Norton Ghost Backup Files in those DrivesAs You can see, solution such as "Mount-ing Image" and "Norton Ghost" can't solve this problem,..Perhaps that the point need "Burn" ISO file(s) to HDD..Is there any Solution for this Case,..?If some of You user of Toshiba Satelit, Toshiba use system like we are talking above..

-reply by Efrada

[alnatih 0]

you can create image files to be burned oncd or dvd and you can mount "images" of cd/dvd content including dvd video and audio cd´s but burn it......i dont think so,read about virtual drives

[iGuest 3]

Descriptive Title for Opinion/FeedbackBurn Iso To Hd?

Hi everyone

This is a really interesting thread, and thanks for all the suggestions.

I had a question about burning an iso onto a hdd partition.

I bought a very expensive sony vaio a few years ago, but the dvd drive failed on me after a year and it didnt have any boot options for booting from usb. (it doesnt have an a: floppy either). However, I did create an XP partition using driveimage 7 (when the dvd drive was working), so if I ever needed to reinstall windows I could boot one of the 2 XP partitions and restore the drive using the windows XP driveimage environment.

 My question is, if I cant get into dos (coz the XP doesnt allow you to do that, and since I don't have a dvd drive) how can I create a partition which has my recoevery cd iso of choice on it (eg Hirens cd or BartPE)?

Thanks for your help and reading the long post.

 

-question by coolj80Keywords: iinstalling a boot cd image onto a hdd partition

[yordan 10]

Some USB flashdrives can be formatted as FAT32 drives, and are seen as disk drives, so you can boot off these usb drives. Simply just after powering on your system, go to the boot settings (usually it's something like F8), choose "hard drives" and you will see "USB2" in the hard drives menu.Of course, you will have to go to another system which has a working floppy disk in order to format your flashdisk as a bootable disk.Booting so, you will be able, as you say, to "get into dos" and restore your backup from the other dsk.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Some USB flashdrives can be formatted as FAT32 drives, and are seen as disk drives, so you can boot off these usb drives. Simply just after powering on your system, go to the boot settings (usually it's something like F8), choose "hard drives" and you will see "USB2" in the hard drives menu.Of course, you will have to go to another system which has a working floppy disk in order to format your flashdisk as a bootable disk.
Booting so, you will be able, as you say, to "get into dos" and restore your backup from the other dsk.

I'm not sure if you can boot into ISOs on your USB drive. I think it's a safer bet if you just boot it under the file system and make sure it has a boot block installed.

xboxrulz

[yordan 10]

I'm not sure if you can boot into ISOs on your USB drive. I think it's a safer bet if you just boot it under the file system and make sure it has a boot block installed.
xboxrulz

coolj80's question was concerning ms-dos and/or BartPe. Lucky strike, both ms-dos and BartPe can boot off an USB drive.

[iGuest 3]

Hi, all those saying that "You can't burn into a HDD cause of laser blah blah" are really missing the point and it has been pointed many times, the thing is that some people like to test OS's and they are really coming out very often, using a "re-writeable dvd" is the worst thing to do since to erase it it would take long long time and to burn it a bigger time yet, I've manage to do this with "windows vista x64 ultimate" the only thing is I don't remember how I did it xD... I took my external HDD and "restore" the iso image into the HDD, I think that's the process use a software to restore an ISO file into a HDD and it will be like "burning into a HDD" Yeah know I remember you have to create a partition without a specific file format and then format it by restoring an ISO into it, then It will be "burned" exactly like if it was a DVD of your choice, if this helps you let me know, I'll try to use partition magic or norton ghost to "restore the OS image ISO into the HDD" good luck!!

Vudrok, Cheers!

[iGuest 3]

How do I create those ISO files?Burn Iso To Hd?

mastercomputers

ISO files are just images of the content they cloned, most likely created from a DVD/CD.I use to boot Live CDs off the Hard Drive. It was simply downloading the ISO, giving it a location:

... MC

So how do I create those ISO files of cd content? Specificly, using Ubuntu 8.X linux.

Okimaps

-question by okimaps

 

[iGuest 3]

what he meansBurn Iso To Hd?

 A lot of people here are telling us how to boot off a USB drive or telling us that you cannot burn, but correct me if I am wrong, I think what this guy is trying to ask is how to copy the contents of an ISO along with boot data to a harddisk. So the equivalent of image burning but for harddisk. So imagine he was to burn the iso onto a cd. The filesystem, boot table, bootloader, ect would all go with the files. But imagine if it turned out that was a hdd. He can now boot off the harddisk as if it were a cd. If he has an installation disk ISO, therefore, he could notinstall to a harddisk, but make an installation harddisk. Of a linux live CD could be a linux live harddisk, without installing, just direct burning of the ISO.

There is a way to do this on the mac osx OS and installation disk, just go into disk utility and restore the ISO onto a harddisk. But that is long and tricky

I was wondering if there was a way to make the harddisk look like a CD so that you could use a normal disk burner to do it? I cannot think of anything.

-reply by JacobBG