Recombing a split ISO

[883robert]

Hi! I have a problem storing ISO images on a usb flash disk.

I travel a lot and my work takes me to places with little or no internet access. I use whatever computers are at hand. I carry my software as ISO images on a usb stick and install it on the computer available when on site.

I use a 128 GB flash drive formatted to FAT32. This formatting enables me to use it on Android tablet and phone. My question is: how to I make ISO images of software where the ISO file size exceeds the 4GB limit of FAT32? I've used imgburn to make an ISO image, splitting the file into components of less than 4GB. These are stored on the flash disk as program.i01, program.i02 etc and program.mds.

I want to be able to combine the components back into one single ISO file on the hard disk of the computer I'm using. Then I can mount that ISO file and install the software. I rarely have access to a dvd burner so I'm limited to writing the ISO file to a hard disk. 

I tried 'create image file from disk' but that requires a disk as source and not an ISO file. I tried 'write image file to disk' but that requires a dvd burner as destination rather than ISO file. 'Build' requires files not ISO images

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance

Robert, Australia

[LIGHTNING UK!]

The MDS file is there for mounting in DAEMON Tools as a virtual drive, it'll know to pull in each part of the ISO automatically.

 

If you really want an actual ISO file again, you'll have to merge the files.

 

You could try and find a little tool (maybe https://sourceforge.net/projects/fmerge/) to do that or use the command prompt.

 

copy /b input.i01 + input.i02 output.iso

[dbminter]

And I can think of 2 alternate ways. 

 

 

Mount the split image in virtual drive software and use ImgBurn to create an image of the virtual drive letter without the splitting.

 

 

The other way is a bit more work.  Load the MDS or create one from the split parts in ImgBurn and load that new MDS.  Burn the image to a disc and use ImgBurn to image the disc you just burned.  So, use a rewritable disc if you have one to save on discs.  It will take longer, but you won't have a disc you're just going to throw away.

 

 

Thought of a possible 3rd option if you have UltraISO.  UltraISO might be able to read in the MDS of the split image.  Then, you choose to save the image as a new ISO file.

[883robert]

Thanks but I'm not following you just yet. You suggest 'Mount the split image in virtual drive software and use ImgBurn to create an image of the virtual drive letter without the splitting'. But when I use imgburn to split a 6GB disk I get two files, program.i00 and program.i01, neither of which is an ISO image. Thus I can't mount them.

Your second suggestion 'Load the MDS or create one from the split parts in ImgBurn and load that new MDS.  Burn the image to a disc and use ImgBurn to image the disc you just burned' would work fine but the computers to which I have access don't normally have dvd writers.

Ideally I want a way to recombine the two imgburn files into one image for mounting on the recipient computer. Thanks for your help. Any further suggestions are very welcome.

regards

Robert

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Did you read my reply?

[883robert]

The MDS file is there for mounting in DAEMON Tools as a virtual drive, it'll know to pull in each part of the ISO automatically.

 

If you really want an actual ISO file again, you'll have to merge the files.

 

You could try and find a little tool (maybe https://sourceforge.net/projects/fmerge/) to do that or use the command prompt.

 

copy /b input.i01 + input.i02 output.iso

Thanks for the quick response. I'm in the process of trialling Daemon Tools to mount the image via the MDS file. If it works I'll go for the paid version of Daemon Tools. It would be simpler than combining the two file parts. I'll let you know how I go.

Thanks again

Robert

[883robert]

The MDS file is there for mounting in DAEMON Tools as a virtual drive, it'll know to pull in each part of the ISO automatically.

 

If you really want an actual ISO file again, you'll have to merge the files.

 

You could try and find a little tool (maybe https://sourceforge.net/projects/fmerge/) to do that or use the command prompt.

 

copy /b input.i01 + input.i02 output.iso

Just on the issue of combining files, I have a basic question: I'm not able to combine them using the command line. While it's been a long time since I used the command line regularly my memories not so bad that I can't copy files. However I get a 'File not found' error despite being in the correct directory. Here's the output:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]

D:\ISO images>dir

 Volume in drive D is ROBERT

 Volume Serial Number is 1EA1-53B0

 

 Directory of D:\ISO images

 

19/09/2017  06:52 PM    <DIR>          .

19/09/2017  06:52 PM    <DIR>          ..

19/09/2017  10:41 PM     4,294,965,248 Adobe cs6Master.i00

19/09/2017  10:43 PM     2,369,191,936 Adobe cs6Master.i01

19/09/2017  10:43 PM             4,364 Adobe cs6Master.mds

              27 File(s) 32,394,482,834 bytes

               2 Dir(s)  61,059,530,752 bytes free

D:\ISO images>copy Adobe cs6Master.i00 + Adobe cs6Master.i01 Adobe CS6 large.iso

The system cannot find the file specified.

 

I know you're not expected to be a DOS expert but any suggestions?

thanks

Robert

[LIGHTNING UK!]

When you're using file names with spaces in them, you'll have to enclose them in quotes.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/102739/long-filenames-or-paths-with-spaces-require-quotation-marks

 

You also missed out the all important '/b' to show you're working with binary files.

 

So try..

 

copy /b "Adobe cs6Master.i00" + "Adobe cs6Master.i01" "Adobe CS6 large.iso"

[883robert]

When you're using file names with spaces in them, you'll have to enclose them in quotes.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/102739/long-filenames-or-paths-with-spaces-require-quotation-marks

 

You also missed out the all important '/b' to show you're working with binary files.

 

So try..

 

copy /b "Adobe cs6Master.i00" + "Adobe cs6Master.i01" "Adobe CS6 large.iso"

Bingo! Much obliged. Very happy now.

Robert

[dbminter]

 'Mount the split image in virtual drive software and use ImgBurn to create an image of the virtual drive letter without the splitting'. But when I use imgburn to split a 6GB disk I get two files, program.i00 and program.i01, neither of which is an ISO image. Thus I can't mount them.

 

 

I did forget 2 things. 

 

 

Your target folder for creating a new image file may be on a FAT32 partition instead of NTFS.  If it's FAT32, the new image file MUST be split into parts if the image file is greater than 4 GB.  Since you said the image was 6 GB, if you have a FAT32 partition, you can't merge the split parts into a single ISO on that partition.

 

 

Your ImgBurn settings may have image files split into parts at certain file sizes.  If so, you'd have to change the setting so it doesn't split the image files if you were going to mount the image and create an image from the virtual drive.

 

 

I believe I did say you would have to create an MDS in ImgBurn's Tools menu with the split parts if you didn't have an MDS for mounting in a virtual drive software.