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I'm looking for some tool that, given a zip/rar/tar/* archive file, mounts it as a new Windows drive. Some tools are WinMount or WinArchive, but I need one that allows me to write/create/delete files as well as read. That is, just as if it were a USB stick or something like that. The file doesn't need to be compressed, just archived is fine. Thanks a lot!
caerolus
Posted 2011-12-13T15:48:59.367
Reputation: 181
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Try Pismo File Mount. Its freeware, supports zip, and ISO, but not .rar
yoshco
Posted 2011-12-13T15:48:59.367
Reputation: 384
Apparently Prismo can mount 7zip only if it is LZMA? The 'WinArchiver' mentioned by @zackrspv on the other hand seems to support any 7z format (?). – Glenn Slayden – 2018-01-02T21:35:00.027
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There are a few utilties out there that can do this, but I use this one:
Essentially, you can mount any supported type of archive (zip, rar, 7z, iso, etc), to any # of drives you want, and they act just like regular drive.
Quite useful:
The image above shows drive K -> O; drive K is actually a mounted RAR file for a .NET project :)
zackrspv
Posted 2011-12-13T15:48:59.367
Reputation: 1 826
3doesn't seem to support write operations. – Quonux – 2017-03-31T19:04:32.047
4@Quonux that would be almost impossible in general case. It's very hard to update archive contents without massive writing overhead other than to append new files. – Euri Pinhollow – 2018-07-14T10:48:41.613
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I would argue that it depends on the compressor and its format. It works fine under certain assumptions. One industry case where a online(chunked) compression works is in the Oracle database - https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/compression/advanced-compression-wp-12c-1896128.pdf
– Quonux – 2018-07-27T23:48:37.390
See unix.SE:168807 for a similar question for Linux.
– n611x007 – 2016-09-29T16:50:53.197@caerolus it would be an extreme PITA to use those compressed formats as "disk clones". Tarballs are already kind of better then, but since they lack indexing it's still sub-bar for this use-case. – mirh – 2017-07-11T12:50:53.533
4I don't know if such software exists, but for must compression and archiving methods; removing or changing any part of any file will take at least as long as creating a new archive from scratch. – Eroen – 2011-12-13T15:56:18.227
It doesn't need to be compressed, just archived is fine. – caerolus – 2011-12-13T16:00:30.453
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Could you use a virtual disk, for example a VHD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHD_(file_format) )? Should be supported natively in windows 7.
– Eroen – 2011-12-13T16:08:54.677Yes! didn't know these were supported natively by Windows 7. The problem was having to synchronize tens of thousands of files between machines..so I figured having them in a single file would be easier. Thank you! – caerolus – 2011-12-13T16:29:27.803
@Eroen Still, if there was a way of doing this with zip, rar, tar or whatever, it'd be great in terms of portability and ease of use. – caerolus – 2011-12-13T16:50:40.443