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[mikep]

Hello all,

I know this is the non-technical section but there's nowhere obvious to post this question anywhere else. Sorry.

I'm trying to burn two small files to a cd. They are truecrypt-1.0-source-code.zip and truecrypt-1.0_files.md5.

I've tried Xfburner in Linux and the standard Windows burner. Either way, linux can see the files but windows can't. It just sees the CDs as blank... but full.

Any suggestions, other than to keep banging my head on the desk, gratefully received...

TIA.

M

[Mad Penguin]

Hi Mike,
Generally people use CD's to hold ISO images, which are a pre-defined generic format which tend to work cross platform, although (from memory) it is possible to use CD as block devices, the result of which won't necessarily behave as you expect. 

So when you write to the CD, are you literally copying files to the CD folder, or, are you telling it to burn an ISO image of a folder containing the files you wish to copy?

(my expectation is that the latter will do what you expect, and the former may be causing you a problem)
I'm afraid it's many years since I've tried this sort of thing, you might consider that a flash drive formatted with a DOS filesystem might be a better / easier / cheaper way to do this, unless you specifically need an immutable copy?

[DavidMcCann]

It's many years since I've stored anything on an optical disk but your problem may be a case of confused formats. The ISO 9660 format, used for creating bootable .iso Linux installers, has to be written as one single item. If you want to treat an optical disk that works like a floppy or hard disk, you need the UDF format. There is a tool mkudffs to format the fisk, part of the udftools package, but my distro doesn't have it and I don't expect many do.

[Keith]

Hi Mike.

Xfburn provides four options: 
1. Burn Image
2. New data composition
3. Blank disk (preparing a disk for a new burn)
4. Audio CD
Since your files are not ISO images, I am guessing that you used #2 or #3. 
"New Data" looks like the appropriate one - did you use that? 

You say that Linux can see the files (on the CD?) but Windows can't.  Do they need to be visible in Windows?  Not sure what your problem actually is. 

Keith

[mikep]

Thanks All,

Keith, I used #2. my problem is that I'm trying to resurrect an ancient PC which needs truecrypt installed and I can't get truecrypt onto it because I can't yet find the usb driver for win98, I haven't got access to another machine with a floppy drive (although installing one may be the last resort), and win98 refuses to see the files on a cd.

MP, not sure how I'd use a flash drive that way, but as I said, I haven't found usb drivers for win98 yet.

David, I'll keep MKUDFFS in mind if all else fails.

Sounds like the easiest options would be to find the usb driver or temporarily install a floopy drive in another pc and write the files to it. Amazingly I still have a couple of floppy drives lying aroung and I've found an old floppy disc.

Come to think of it, the usb driver isn't really an option if I can't get it onto the old pc either. Maybe I'll have to give it internet access just long enough to download the usb driver...

[mikep]

Update.

I just found a site offering drivers for usb 1 and 2 for win98 inside an iso file...

Anyone know how I'd unpack them on the old PC?

[Brian000]

Most distro will allow an ISO to be mounted via mouse-double-click, and viewed like any other disk.

you can then copy/paste files to the ISO, and burn the ISO to the disk... remembering it's the image you are writing to the CD, and not the ISO file itself.

[Brian000]

One obvious option to copy files to/from machine - is to setup a HTTP server somewhere - if you don't have another PC, Android has many options for this (but I can only guess that iOS does).

that would side-step any drive or physical media issues. 

[Keith]

Mike.

I think there might be some confusion here over the use of the term "ISO file" - but I'll skip that.
If you can get your PC connected to the internet why not just transfer the file(s) by email or via Dropbox (or similar cloud file storage such as Mega.nz) and pick them up on another PC? 

Keith

[mikep]

Sorry Folks,

I'm dealing with much more urgent problems at the moment and haven't had time to worry about this.

I'm grateful for all your suggestions and I'll get back to this asap, but that might not be anytime soon...

Thanks again.

M