Re: How to add files to an existing img partition.

[Frantisek Rysanek]

On 28 Jun 2020 at 17:02, galois@nycap.rr.com wrote:

> 
> Yes, I understand Narcis. They're NTFS, but I'm referring to each one
> as Win98 or WinXP, because I'm getting different results from each
> partition. 
>
Windows98 do not know NTFS. They only know FAT12/16/32, with support 
for long filenames strapped on (the original DOS could not do that).

It is rather ironic that you're having a problem with long filenames 
on NTFS = the partition produced by Windows XP. In NTFS, long 
filenames are supported since the dawn of time, and Windows XP in 
particular default to Unicode for the character set... should be no 
problem at all :-) Maybe PowerISO just does not support NTFS 
properly. It's a fairly complex filesystem, compared to the FAT 
family - can be difficult to implement and properly QC by an 
independent third party.

I've tried asking Google for "virtual loopback HBA driver for Windows 
to mount HDD images" - but there were no meaningful results.

Such a driver would have to live in the kernel, but use a file as the 
underlying device. I'm wondering to what extent the abstraction of 
files is available in the NT user space only... Anyone writing this 
kind of a device driver would either have to access files within the 
kernel space, or write a companion user-space counterpart (either a 
desktop app or a service) that would feed data to the HBA or "mass 
storage" driver in the kernel... Maybe it has to do with the fact 
that driver signing is nowadays pretty strict on part of Microsoft, 
which may deter potential open-source whitehat hackers from such an 
endeavour... and there can be other, more subtle hurdles, technical / 
architectural / political.

Frank