Say Goodbye to all those CDs and DVDs

I used to schlep a couple of CD-holders around in my laptop bag all the time.  Back in the good old days you never knew when you were going to be prompted for the original CD/DVD when you were applying a patch (like good old Office used to do).  I quickly learned my lesson and did a custom install with "Run All from my Computer" as the default install choice.  Another gotcha was when you needed to add another service to IIS (like FTP or SMTP) on a Windows Server VM and, of course, you needed the CD.

And, of course it never failed that if I was at work, I left the CD I needed at home.  And if I was at home, well, you know the story.  To get around that problem, I started copying all of my CDs and DVDs to ISO images and carrying around an external USB drive (a teeny little Western Digital Passport) with my arsenal of image files.  Problem solved, I had the required media with me anywhere I went.  The added benefit of things being in an ISO format is that when I create a Virtual PC project, I could just mount the ISO as a virtual CD and things always seemed to install much quicker over slapping a disc in the drive.

I used to do the same thing when I installed apps on my desktop.  I used a program from Slysoft called Virtual Clone Drive to mount the ISO file as a virtual drive and again, lickety split installs.

With my recent choice to bite the bullet and go 64-bit with my new laptop I ran into a little snag.  Virtual Clone Drive no likey 64-bit Vista.  A little searching and I was able to come up with a similar app – enter MagicISO.  It installed fine under Vista x64 and works fine.  No muss, no fuss and no greasy aftertaste.  And now with my second 200Gig HD in the laptop, I can store them all internally and don’t need the external drive.

I still carry around the USB passport drive for backup purposes and "just in case" situations.  Slick little drive that doesn’t require an AC adapter.  It’s completely USB powered, and with only ONE USB port (lots of similar drives need two USB ports, one for the data and the other for extra power).  One caution on these though…they come with a six-inch USB to mini-USB cable and on some systems, you mysteriously can’t get them to be recognized by some computers if you try to use another longer cable.  Must be some voltage drop along the cable with the longer run or something.  This can be a pain if you’re trying to hook the drive up to a tower with the USB ports up high as you might have to set the drive on a book or something for the short cable to reach.  Strange but as long as you stick with the short cable that comes with the drive all seems to work fine.