1
I have made a bootable USB stick which successfully installs Windows 7.
I'd also like to use it with VM Ware, which only recognises DVD drives.
Can I mount my bootable USB drive to emulate being a DVD drive?
Josh Comley
Posted 2009-10-12T22:04:55.697
Reputation: 3 582
2
No, is the answer I seem to have found. Not without using an ISO image.
Josh Comley
Posted 2009-10-12T22:04:55.697
Reputation: 3 582
Maybe it can be tricked by having a symlink with somefilename.iso pointing to the device node name of the USB stick. – Skaperen – 2012-07-27T19:07:30.547
2
Not that I know of. But you can create an ISO image from it using ISORecorder, then mount it with a tool like Virtual Clonedrive to achieve the same effect.
John T
Posted 2009-10-12T22:04:55.697
Reputation: 149 037
2You can mount the ISO directly as a DVD drive in VMWare, no need of Virtual CloneDrive. – Snark – 2009-10-13T03:21:24.423
Yup. doesn't hurt to have a virtual DVD drive on the host though, they come in very handy. – John T – 2009-10-13T03:37:16.467
Yeh, I had already tried that but I couldn't find a way to extract the "bootable" part of the USB stick. ISORecorder doesn't seem to do this unless I'm missing something.. – Josh Comley – 2009-10-13T08:00:23.957
Try using dd from a Linux liveCD, isorecorder probably can't grab the boot information as you said. – John T – 2009-10-13T12:02:13.453
the "bootable" part of the USB stick isn't the same as the "bootable" part of a CD/DVD (different sector sizes, for one thing). even if you manage to copy the boot stuff off the USB stick, a CD-emulator probably won't be able to boot from it. you need to create a bootable CD version of your USBstick (just burn to ISO instead of an actual disc). – quack quixote – 2009-10-28T01:08:36.260
Check this article from How To Geek. It's a little bit of a hack, but it should work for what you are trying to do.
– Rabbid10 – 2012-07-27T16:19:37.537