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Under Linux I can create an ISO image with UDF filesystem, using K3b for instance. Then I can copy such ISO image to the hard disk, using dd command for instance. Connecting such preapared hard disk to a Linux box, the UDF filesystem is immediately identified, and can be mounted exclusively just as read only volume.

Such prepared hard disk is not recognised by MS-Windows, even it can do a virtual mount of an ISO file, but the UDF volume in the HD does not recognise at all. I tried to help a little creating a fake MBR with one partition:

udf_vol: start= 0, size= 214015464, type=96

but without any success. (the first 64 sectors are ignored in ISO-9660)

I know, that the main difference is that in linux (unix in general) everything is file, hence the mount command is able to mount the real CD device nearly in the same way as an ISO image file.

But is there any third party „mounter“ which can be able to do the same in MS-Windows? Or is it possible in PowerShell?

Just to clear the goal: I do not want to mount virtual CD from an ISO image file, but to mount the hard drive volume formatted as ISO-9660/UDF (ISO image copied onto a hard disk).

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  • What do you want to achieve? A writable UDF virtual hard drive?
    – Daniel B
    Commented Apr 8, 2022 at 21:12
  • There is no reliable way, how to make a high (>200GB) capacity data medium read only under MS-Windows OS. The only way is the use of so called hardware blocator. Using UDF format directly on the hard disk could be the solution. In *nix like OS it is fully functional, but while OS MS-Windows mounts CD/DVD/BD formated ISO-9660/UDF automatically and read only, the hard disk with the same content is ignored.
    – schweik
    Commented Apr 9, 2022 at 22:13
  • schweik, your response to the question of Daniel B shows that there is a big difference between what you want to achieve and what you have written in your question. Obviously your question can be understood very differently - as can seen be my response. If you do not ask precise questions the responses will not satisfy you. Everything what you said in your comment belongs to your question. Instead you rant about Microsoft Windows not behaving like linux.
    – r2d3
    Commented Apr 10, 2022 at 10:38

2 Answers 2

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In windows operating systems mounting ISO files as a drive is typically handled by creating virtual CD/DVD drives. Those virtual drives can then be assigned ISO files p.e.

Please check out Daemon Tools which support everything from Win98 until Windows 11.

I am not sure if UltraISO or ISOBuster support the creation of virtual drives as well.

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  • As I added to question: I do not try to mount ISO image file as virtual CD! I have the hard disk with the same content as the CD/DVD/BD UDF format has. In OS MS-Windows the CD is mounted automatically, but hard drive with the same content is ignored. While in Linux you can mount the CD and hard drive with the same content in the same way and of course read only even the UDF content is on hard drive.
    – schweik
    Commented Apr 9, 2022 at 22:33
  • schweik, there is no need to finish your sentence with an exclamation mark. Rather than asking questions about why your solution failed you should ask what you try to achieve. I won't continue answering this question.
    – r2d3
    Commented Apr 10, 2022 at 10:34
  • Sorry, I did not want to accuse you using an exclamation mark. You can see many question asking what they did wrong (why their solution failed). I described very precisely what I did while preparing the example, to be easy repeated. I also specify the goal. I did not tell only that this solution was working on Windows about 3years ago. If you do not want to answer I do not make a suicide. You need not know everything. I also do not know, that's why I set the question. I also do not want to start any flame. Thanks for effort.
    – schweik
    Commented Apr 12, 2022 at 11:51
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Well, as the main reason of my dervish dancing is to be able save some data to a hard disk but make it immutable by Windows workstation. Using Linus OS there is no problem to mount any block device as read only what is impossible in Apple macOS or MS-Windows. By the time I found another way how to prepare read only volume just for MS-Windows: Using internal Disk_manager I can create virtual disk (*.vhdx) (baloon ~ dynamic & compressed), format it NTFS. Than I can copy all necessary data into it, and unmout it. The vhdx file can be copied to any transport media (HDD, SSD, USB-flash ...). Such file can be mounted read only even in MS-Windows using the disk manager or (on NTFS) it can be given to read only Attribut, what is suffitient in ought to mount this vitual disk file as read only using automount (double-clicking).

I can thank for all inspirational comment, and passion of readers. There is plenty of reason to lock files and file structure even in MS-Windows.

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