Networks·41,450 discussions

Using CD’s on a network

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I want to be able to load approx 10 CD roms onto a network hard drive to allow all users access to the information. There is plenty of space on the system but I need some software to handle it on the server and client machines running windows 9X and NT.
I do not want to have to buy a dedicated CD stack machine.

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Using CD’s on a network

In reply to Using CD’s on a network

We simply use drive mappings…actually one drive mapping in the login script to the root where the cdroms are stored. To the average user it looks just like the disc is sitting in a CDRom drive. A couple of hints:

1. Copy the cd’s from a remote location accross the network. A copy on the server in question can render it slow to respond to network users due to heavy I/O.
2. Use xcopy PATHNAME\*.* /H/E/K/R to retain the read-only and empty dir properties that a CDRom would have. We actually ran into problems on a CDrom Database that hadn’t retained read-only attributes.
3. For replaceable CDRoms, be sure to delete the old one before copying the new one to the drive. Cd’s such as MS TechNet rename their DB’s every month so they would stay during an overwite.

Using CD’s on a network

In reply to Using CD’s on a network

Would work but would need a lot of user input

Using CD’s on a network

In reply to Using CD’s on a network

I’m not sure there is any advantage to doing it this way, but you can create a directory tree and map a drive to each directory.

It shouldn’t require any special software on either end because it should look just like any other drive letter to the workstation.

paul

Using CD’s on a network

In reply to Using CD’s on a network

Would work but would need a lot of user input.

Using CD’s on a network

In reply to Using CD’s on a network

I use a product called CD Copier from IMSI.
It allows up to 23 virtual CD Rom Drives, with the advantage that you can have an unlimited (only by space) number of CD images and you can dock or undock them from the virtual drives. Just a word of warning, DO NOT USE WITH WINDOWS 2000, it will corrupt the W2K install.

Using CD’s on a network

In reply to Using CD’s on a network

Many thanks

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