Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 12:04:01 +0200 From: "=?windows-1251?B?QWxleGFuZHJlIEthb3VraG92IFwo3esuIO/u9/LgIDJcKQ==?=" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: W2k and CD emulation software -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi! This came up several times on this list but I would like develop this point further. I hope my experience will be helpful for some of you. Please guive me your opinion. Several companies share the market. For comprehensive list see: http://home.kamp.net/home/stefan.kirschdorf/cd_tools/menu.htm On win9x platform I see two major competitors CD Copier and Virtual Drive. CD Copier does not support W2k at all so I've put it aside. Virtual Drive did not get far better. First on W2k it is limited to only one drive and it will take the ext letter available. It also blocks hot plug and play of my Sony Diskman ie I have to reboot Libby every time I want plug PCMCIA in. So actually I am once agin looking for a perfect CD emulator. For W2k I just discovered VirtuoCD. Information on its website (http://www.virtuocd.com) is very scant. So I propose to read below my correspondence with its creator - Stephen J. Prochniak [EMAIL PROTECTED] I shoul probably mention that I have no any finantial interest in VirtuoCD. From: Stephen J. Prochniak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 07, 2000 1:44 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: About VirtuoCD I'm sorry to hear that you found the web page to be inadequate... However, I appreciate the feedback, as it's our best way to improve. Now on to the questions: > Version 1.4 is proposed to download but actual version is 2.1 what > is the difference? The 1.x versions are the freely downloadable ones, while the 2.x versions are the retail. v1.4 is functionally equal to v2.1 except that v2.1 allows you to create as many virtual drives as you want, and letter them as you wish. Later features which will appear in the 2.x versions will not appear in the 1.x versions. Once you buy a 2.x versions, you get all of the upgrades for free. > In evaluation version I could not figure out as to attribute > different letter to drive. In the eval, it's hardcoded to V: > Actual compression is nearly nil what about v2.1? In comparison > with virtual drive? Compression depends on the contents of the CD. Since most CDs contain data which is already in a compressed state, sometimes you don't see much benefit to compression. > What your current policy about selling. Will be all future versions > be available for actual buyers? Once you buy 2.x, you get all the 2.x updates for free. At this time, I don't envision any features that will not be included in a 2.x version. The only reason that I said, "if it will not be difficult to implement..." is in the case that I ever find something to add or change the product dramatically. I don't see this happening. Everything that I have thought of is in a queue to become a future 2.x version. I replied: Thank you for your response. The only point is that I have just tested compression of 417MB CD. While Virtual drive compressed to 142MB VortuoCD did not compress at all. Because of this nasty feature I have to delay my purchase until it is properly implemented (my main purpose is to use on laptop and there is no many disk space to waste). May be you will be interested in my impressions as a user for guive some ideas about this market. First of all the reason I will wait is that the driver is much better designed as compared to Virtual drive (ie loads on demand, supportmany disks and letter assignement). It does not blocks PNP of my Sony Diskman.It does not seems tobe as bloated. All these features are lacking under W2k in Virtual drive. And last but not least VirtuoCD is a bit cheeper. The only point is that VCD.sys can rarely be dynamically unloaded and then never can be reloaded. This is all. Looking forward for your future versions, Alexandre From: Stephen J. Prochniak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 1:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: About VirtuoCD Alexandre- Thanks for the info on VirtuoCD vs. Virtual Drive! I appreciate it... What is the filesystem on the drive that you are trying to store images on? The compression will only work on NTFS. Also, when you look at the file size after compression, it shows you the full size, not the compressed size. If you go into properties, you can see the actual size of the file as it sits on the disk. Let me know if this is what's going on... I know what you mean about the dynamic unloading and loading... It's a real pain to develop the driver when you have to reboot everytime you want to unload and then load a new one. The problem is that this VCD.sys driver pretends to be a driver for an actual disk device, so a file system driver comes along (CDFS in our case) and 'mounts' the drive. In order to stop the driver, you have to 'unmount' these volumes first. I have a command line program which I wrote that will unmount filesystems. using this will allow you to unload the driver and usually start it again. Let me know if you want it, and I'll email it to you... It's pretty crude, but it does the job. Thanks Alexandre, Steve J. Prochniak I replied: Dear Stephen, I am glad with your explications about issues in dynamic loading and unloading. I think that putting all this online would gratly promote your program. What about compresion I think I understand what do you mean. It seems to me that VirtuoCD compression is actually NTFS intrinsik compression. It is always "on" on my drive. That is why I thoght that there was something wrong with your program. In fact, the compressed size of file in question is about 200MB which is still way greater than 142MB of Virtual Drive. Can you confirm my impressions? Thank you, Alexandre From: Stephen J. Prochniak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2000 1:57 AM To: Alexandre Kaoukhov Subject: Re: About VirtuoCD Hi Alexandre- Yes. When I sat down to implement a compression algorythem in my driver, the realization came to me that... "Wait a second, Microsoft already has a compression algorythem built into the kernel at file system level." After some thought, I decided that I didn't think that I (Nor Farstone for that matter) could not develop a compression scheme which would be more efficient than the MS compression when both size and speed were considered. While I admit that I haven't done any tests on Virtual Drive's compression, somehow I find it hard to believe that there isn't some cost associated with the increased compression. It's likely that there's some sacrafice in speed. Once I get some of the features out that I have lined up for future releases, I will certainly consider adding my own compression (Which would work on all filesystems and not just NTFS) which could maybe have a variable Size-Speed adjustment. Let me know what you think of my decision making process in this matter... Once again, I appreciate your input. You're quite a bit more educated in software than most of the people that I get questions from.. Very refreshing. Steve J. Prochniak I replied: Hi Steve, I would like remind you why most people buy CD emulation software. First, all software designed to run from CD is not sensitive to speed. Otherwise they have an option of partial or complete install to HD. Thus, most people are using virtual CDs for the convenience they add (i.e. to get rid of CDs themselves). And like in my laptop user's case to get rid of external CD drive as well. I think that most people would like to store as much CDs as HD will let them using the best compression available. Very few of us for whom money is not the problem and speed is important will just not use compression. I would stress again that I have already upgraded my Libretto's HD to 6GD and it is already 4,5GB full. Just to show you how space is important to me. As far as I know there are copyright free compression algorithm available. Another point is that there is a nasty bug in your VirtuoCD: create.vdd -> add it to list -> delete .vdd in through Windows Explorer -> go to VirtuoCD you will see that virtual drive is still in the list - -> try to insert -> Windows crashes immediately. I also saw that you want to make VirtuoCD rewritable. Good idea! Together with good compression this will be decisive to bring the whole emulation CD software market to you. Last, maybe gadget feature - try to integrate to Windows Explorer: xxx.vdd right click VDD->Insert to default drive Insert to drive: (then window with choices) Well, this is probably all I may want from a CD emulator. I would also like to post part of our mails to Libretto mailing list because questions about CD emulation rise on a quite regular manner and this will also help to support your software and motivate further development. Final and personal point is that I will delay my purchase until you add good compression engine. I am a Russian student actually living in France. This means that my wallet is not full of money that all my software purchases are driven by need to support of developers of good software. I am quite cautious in this as many companies dump their customers e.g. CD Copier and Virtual Drive with its only castrated W2k support. Regards, Alexandre From: Stephen J. Prochniak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 1:10 AM To: Alexandre Kaoukhov Subject: Re: About VirtuoCD Hi Alexandre- You make good points, and I appreciate it. I guess I never considered compression of great importance because I am sitting here with 2 desktops with about 50GB each... I imagine that if I had a laptop that I'd feel the same way. v2.2 is going to be out soon... I'll get the compression algorythem into v2.3. Shouldn't be more than 2 months away. The explorer integration is a good idea as well... Someone mentioned this to me before, but I still haven't figured out what I think the best type of integration is yet. I like the idea of writing a filesystem that makes all of the CDs look like they're part of 1 drive, but of course, that's signifigantly harder than a shell extension. About the bug... Well... I agree that the driver shouldn't crash the system under any circumstances... But you're not supposed to delete the .vdd file! The .vdd file doesn't really have anything to do with a 'drive', it stands for 'virtual disk data'. It's a file that contains the binary dump of a few structures that are filled at the time that the image is taken and I ask the CDROM driver for some info. This way, when some software asks my driver for info, I just look it up in that file and report it. Let me know if you have any other interesting ideas! Steve J. Prochniak I replied: Hi Steve, I am glad that you have finally understood how good compression is important and I am looking forward to see v2.3. Now about explorer integration... My idea is quite simple. VirtuoCD has to store information about associations CD-ROM<->Virtual drive. It is quite obvious feature because as the number of images grows and the number of drives usually trails behind it becomes harder to remind letter in which image should be inserted. Moreover, this was already available in Farstone Virtual Drive when installed on Win9x. Then as you already have command line program there are just a few lines to add in registry. I have not tested command line yet but presume that it somehow handles problem when another image is already inside "Eject? Yes/No". There is much better and much harder way of integration. Create virtual drive and then insert all images inside i.e. cheat windows programs when they ask for any CD say that it is already there. Create a shell which will handle CDs as plain folders i.e. copy, move, delete etc. Or even do all this straight from explorer. But this will be significant improvement which will bring CD emulation to a quite deferent level and not just a virtual copy of real device with all its limitations. Finally, this will allow you to break English alphabet limitations. About the bug... I understand that things should not be used in a way they were not designed. But when you need to free some disk space... You will go first to CP->Add/Remove Programs and uninstall all that junk you have just downloaded and run once. (With Windows we all learned that deleting program is not enough one has to uninstall instead. This is why I prefer programs which do not need installation and do not make any changes to registry. This gives me warm feeling of taking back control over the beast - for a few moments I am not just a soft appendix of the mouse.) Then you will delete all respective downloads. Then you will see folder with all those xxx.vdd... A week later you will need CD which you did not use for months... You know what happens. The point is that first I said "something went wrong!" second "chit! something went wrong with VirtuoCD!". I remembered that I am trying to insert deleted CD only when Windows crashed thrice. I think Steve you are asking too much. That is all for now. Alexandre -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.5.3 iQA/AwUBOQ6aAhXehJipATvDEQIcbACfVAfFnzHycUPtE98LmoCTPunIEB8AoNx/ EqEWq+cuzJKWOsnHbyLpupMW =31KH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ************************************************************** http://libretto.basiclink.com - Libretto mailing list http://libretto.basiclink.com/archive - Archives http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/portable/faq.html - FAQ -------UNSUBSCRIBE------- mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=cmd:unsubscribe --------UNSUBSCRIBE DIGEST------ Use above but add DIGEST to the subject line... **************************************************************
