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    External hard drive to run CDs & DVDs?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by JackBauer, Jul 13, 2006.

  1. JackBauer

    JackBauer Notebook Deity

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    Is it possible to load or copy an entire DVD/CD (like a game or movie) to an external hard drive so that you no longer need to use the DVD/CD in the optical drive?

    Thanks for any tips!
     
  2. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

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    Yes it is. You can rip a movie and use a virtual drive for a game.
     
  3. NetBrakr

    NetBrakr Notebook Deity

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    Yes, i used Alcohol 120% to do this all the time.

    JC
     
  4. mZimm

    mZimm Notebook Evangelist

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    Using Alcohol 120% it is incredibly easy to do. You can create an image of your disk and then mount it in a virtual drive so you don't need the original disk.
     
  5. JackBauer

    JackBauer Notebook Deity

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    I'll give Alcohol 120% a try. Thanks for the tips!

    Nice scores on your M1710, Zimm!!
     
  6. mZimm

    mZimm Notebook Evangelist

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    No problem, hope it works out for ya. You'll need a pretty big hard drive though depending on how many images you make, since a lot of games these days can be 5 GB.

    Thanks for the props, I got a helluva 7900GS it seems like. :)
     
  7. compaq64

    compaq64 Notebook Consultant

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    It sounds cool at first but it is kind of dumb, however, if you have an extra external hd lying around its a sweet idea. I use my external drive due to high definition video files im working on for people so I really dont have room to store disk images. But i have tried it in the past and Alcohol 120% works sweet, you can also use daemon tools to mount it thats what i did instead of using Alcohol 120%.
     
  8. mZimm

    mZimm Notebook Evangelist

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    DT4 comes with too much spyware for my taste, and it screwed up my system before, so I stay away from it. I don't just make images of every disk I have, but if I have a game that I play often and I don't want the disk to get scratched I will run it off of that so that I don't screw up the disk.