Windows 8 to Support Native ISO and VHD Mounting
Mount those ISOs in Windows 8 without any additional tools.
Many of you have likely handled disc image files or even virtual hard drives. Sometimes there's no need to burn a DVD if you already have the disc image on your hard drive. While there is third-party software that will quickly and conveniently mount a disc image so that it appears as a DVD drive, such functionality will be baked into Windows 8.
Rajeev Nagar, principal group program manager for Windows, detailed Windows 8's built-in ISO and VHD mounting support.
"So how does this work in Windows 8? It’s quite simple – just 'mount' the ISO file (you can select mount from the enhanced Explorer ribbon or double-click or right-click on the file), and a new drive letter appears, indicating that the contents are now readily accessible," he wrote. "Underneath the covers, Windows seamlessly creates a 'virtual' CDROM or DVD drive for you on-the-fly so you can access your data."
Windows 8 will also support mounting of virtual drives.
"The Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format is a publicly-available image format specification that allows encapsulation of the hard disk into an individual file for use by the operating system as a virtual disk in all the same ways physical hard disks are used," Nagar explained. "VHDs are handy for portability of system settings or to play back what has been saved as a snapshot of a system."
"Accessing a VHD in Windows 8 is as simple as what we’ve done with ISO files, but there is one important difference: rather than appearing as a removable drive (as is the case with ISO), VHDs appear as new hard drives," wrote Nagar.
Check out a demo of this function in the video below:
- Angelbird Now Shipping SSD RAID Card for 800 MB/s
- Hacker Claiming He Can Exploit Windows Update
- ADATA Doubles Down on SATA III With Value SSD
- Blizzard: Six "Proven Property" Titles by 2014
- IBM Has Plans for a 100 PFlop Supercomputer
- HP Unveils Consumer-Priced 3D Scanner
- England's Rugby World Cup Team Gets Own Phone
- Virgin Media Announces a Tivo iPad App
- Waterstones is Launching it's own Ereader
- 3UK Files EC Complaint About Competitors' NFC Efforts
- Sony Ericsson Ray Lands on UK Networks
- The First Glimpse of the Windows 8 Start Menu
- Opinion: Can You Blame the PC Crash on the iPad?
- Apple Files Patent to Make a Zero-Power PSU
- HP UK's Final Shipment of TouchPads Reserved for Staff
- Ofcom Bans Automatically Renewing Broadband Contracts
- SanDisk Pushing For Low Power Consumption SSDs
- Microsoft to Release Windows 8 Developer Preview
Pretty handy addition, especially the VHD mounting.
Still not enough to make me buy it, but hey-ho.
Well that is useful! at least we won't need to be really bothering in installing other 3rd parties sw.I just hope this will support more formats
this is quite a good move actually... no more 3rd party programs that they have to worry about
Hasn't osx had these features for awhile now, they should have had this feature in win7 or vista by now.
There has to be a catch some where,because a lot of people out there use iso to burn ilegally.
I think that is why I will stay with window XP and use third party software programs.
You can already mount a VHD in Windows 7, it's just a pain to do (you have to use the storage manager).
"There has to be a catch some where,because a lot of people out there use iso to burn ilegally."
Agree with your statement about pirating but actually no there's no catch, in larger company environments where you use volume/open licenses you no longer get media from MS as standard all software is downloaded from their site in ISO format.
As they move more and more to media-less software I guess they are trying to make deployment a little bit easier.
There has to be a catch some where,because a lot of people out there use iso to burn ilegally.
For a start, its just as illegal to possess data which you are not illegally entitled to, weather it is on a DVD or on a Hard Drive.
Secondly the data format is not illegal but like most objects can be used for illegal purposes. A Pen is not illegal because you can write illegal things with it.
I think that is why I will stay with window XP and use third party software programs.
Now you are just trolling.
Nice, but still, it doesn't look as convenient as a nice little tray-icon, which has global hot-keys, and a Disc switch manager (Just press a Key-combo, and it will load the next Disc in list).