Virtual drives
Virtual drives can often be very helpful which is why O&O DiskImage has the option for mounting them from images. Thanks to virtual drives, images don’t have to be restored if you only want to use individual files from the backup. Images can instead be mounted and used while the system’s running.
A special driver from O&O DiskImage will often be needed for mounting images. The program will inform you if this driver is needed and prompts you to install it.
Mount a drive
You can have your created image file displayed in Windows Explorer as a virtual drive. This allows you to copy files or directories from the image file onto existing hard disks.It is, however, not possible to make changes (such as deleting or adding files) to the virtual hard disk mounted from the image file.
- Open Tools in the menu bar and select the option Mount drive . Or use ctrl+M.
- In the dialog window, select the image file (*.omg) from which you want to mount the drive. If you are not sure, you can look up the details of the image under Image information.
- After selecting the image file, all drives included in the image will be listed in the program window.
- Select the displayed drive from the image.
- Afterwards, you can select any name from the drive list (e.g. G:) for the drive from the image.
- Then, click Mount drive. The virtual drive from the image will then be visible as a regular drive in the Windows Explorer.
Please note that you may only access sectors which contain image files. Refreshing can take a few moments.
Please keep in mind that drives can only be mounted from an image if the image is available locally. You cannot mount a drive from an image located in the network.
Enable mounting disk:
If you create an image of one or more partitions/volumes, the image contains additional information about the disk (or hard disk) along with the imaged data. This information will concern the hard disk's structure as well as its corresponding system areas such as the master boot record, possibly existing extended boot records, the LDM (logical disk management) database or the GUID partition table. With the function Enable mounting entire disk, you can load this information or use it for acquainting the hard disk to the operating system based on the disk's original information. We recommend using this function when you want to restore deleted or destroyed data from a forensic image.
Creating a virtual disk out of an entire hard disk can result in recognition problems for the virtual disk when the following applies to the hard disk being imaged:
- defective or invalid partition tables
- partitioning process not supported by your operating system (e.g. GPT)
- dynamic hard disks containing volumes that are spanned, striped, mirrored or RAID5 when not all the hard disks being used were imaged
- encrypted hard disk
Technical limitations
- Windows refresh problem: if you're working with a remote desktop connection, a new login will be needed for displaying the mounted drives.
- Mounting images larger than 2TB is not supported by Windows XP (32-bit).
After restarting from Windows, the virtual drive is removed automatically from the drive list.
When mounting VHD / VHDX files, the following error message may appear: "File could not be mounted. The disk image is not initialized, contains partitions that cannot be recognized, or contains volumes that have not been assigned drive letters. Use disk management Snap-in to ensure that the disk, partitions, and volumes are in a usable state. " This particular error message can be ignored. Your file is integrated correctly despite the error message.
Access Issues Due to Changed Security ID
Are you encountering a message indicating that you lack the necessary permissions to open certain files? This issue may arise because the Security ID (SID) of your current user account does not match the SID of the owner of the folder you are attempting to open. Such a discrepancy often occurs if the folder in question was created under a previous Windows installation.
Solution: Activating the Administrator Account
To gain access to the files, you need to activate the default-disabled "Administrator" account. This will provide you with the necessary permissions to access the affected files. Please proceed with caution, as working with administrator rights also carries risks and enables accidental changes to the system.
Mount an ISO file
If you have saved data as an ISO file, you can mount this ISO file as drive and view the files it contains. This allows you to copy individual files and folders from the ISO file onto existing drives. It is, however, not possible to make changes (such as deleting or adding files) to the virtual hard disk mounted from the ISO file.
- Open Tools in the menu bar and select the option Mount ISO file as drive.
- Select the ISO file (*.iso), whose content you want to mount as a drive.
- After selecting the ISO file, click Mount ISO file. If you want to label it with a certain letter, you can select another letter from the list.
- Refreshing can take a few moments.
- The virtual drive from the ISO file will then be visible as a regular drive in the Windows Explorer.
If you want the virtual drive to also be visible in the O&O DiskImage drive list, make sure to check Include CD and DVD drives under Program settings/General and click Show drives not able to be imaged under View.
After restarting from Windows, the virtual drive is removed automatically from the drive list.
Unmount a drive
Remove mounted drive
If you no longer wish to see a virtual drive that you mounted from an ISO or imaging file, under Tools click /strong>Remove and remove the drive in the program window.
The virtual drive will be automatically removed from the drive list after you restart Windows.