Emulate network share as CD drive?

[tfboy]

I simply can't find any software that does this.

What I have is a network share, for example \\server\media\mp3files which I want to be visible as a CD drive, not a mapped drive.

All the software I've used and seen by doing a quick google allows you to have virtual CD drives which mount images but not files located in a directory shared over a samba network share.

I've even tried adding another virtual CD drive in daemon tools and then using the NTFS redirection in disc manager, but it only works for local NTFS volumes and not networks.

Of course, I could just create a CD image from the files on the network, but that takes time and doubles space usage which I want to avoid for obvious reasons.

Anyone know of anything out there?

[Kezzer]

I thought you could just do this via Windows? Right click on the drive, go to sharing and security and hey presto?

[aidanjt]

I simply can't find any software that does this.

What I have is a network share, for example \\server\media\mp3files which I want to be visible as a CD drive, not a mapped drive.

All the software I've used and seen by doing a quick google allows you to have virtual CD drives which mount images but not files located in a directory shared over a samba network share.

I've even tried adding another virtual CD drive in daemon tools and then using the NTFS redirection in disc manager, but it only works for local NTFS volumes and not networks.

Of course, I could just create a CD image from the files on the network, but that takes time and doubles space usage which I want to avoid for obvious reasons.

Anyone know of anything out there?

I'm a bit confused as to what you're trying to achieve, you want to pretend a folder of mp3's is a CD-Rom drive that can magically hold hundreds to thousands of compressed audio streams? What's the point?.. no program is going to be able to treat it as a CD even if it were possible, which it isn't. An audio CD holds a stream of data in tracks, CD audio doesn't have any concept of files or directories.

[tfboy]

I'm running some tests with software that "ignores" mapped drives, and only "sees" CD/DVD/optical drives instead.

Maybe the example of MP3s was wrong. I didn't mean an audio CD, I meand a data CD or DVD-R if you prefer. Replace MP3s with video clips if you want.

So in reality, I have:

\\server\media\clips\car-race1.avi
\\server\media\clips\car-race2.avi
\\server\media\clips\car-race3.avi
\\server\media\clips\wedding\church.avi
\\server\media\clips\wedding\lunch.avi
\\server\media\clips\wedding\dancing.avi

etc

What I want to appear is an optical drive, for example E:\ with:
the following files on it:

car-race1.avi
car-race2.avi
car-race3.avi
wedding\church.avi
wedding\lunch.avi
wedding\dancing.avi

[tfboy]

Bump / help please

[Moby-Dick]

I think you'd have to create the .ISO file and mount that.

[tfboy]

Yeah, I'm just trying to find a way of avoiding that.

When I'm playing around with some homebrew HD footage, it's a pain to have to "repackage" 10-30GB worth of data for no reason other than making an image

Then, when I make a small tweak in my menus or whatever, I have to recompile the image. And another x minutes wait