Chapter
Two
Creating
Ordinary Virtual Memory Disk & WinXP System Disk Image File
Booting
Up Ordinary Virtual Memory Disk
2.1 To
be able to boot up an ordinary virtual memory disk under WinXP, one
has to build a blank disk image file first. So after setting up as
described in Chapter One, on re-booting, the user will be presented a
ntldr boot-up screen as on Page 1 above.
By
selecting the first entry on this ntldr boot-up screen, the user
boots up WinXP on the second partition of the hard disk thus newly
setup and enters the WinXP desktop. One can then open Diskless Angel
for creating a blank partition image file and then build it into a
blank disk image file by using the following procedure:
(a)
Select Tools Menu and bring up Create Blank Image screen
and
then
(b)
Select Tools Menu and bring up Build Disk Image screen
and
fill in the information as listed in the following two screens. After
that, two blank image files will be created; the 850m.img is a
partition image file of 850 Mb, the 850m.dsk is a disk image file of
the same size. The partition image file is a sparse file, not taking
up full size disk space, the disk image file however takes up all
850Mb of disk space.
After
creating this disk image file of 850 Mb, it is advisable to compress
it into gzip format so that a compressed gzip file of a blank disk
image takes up very small amount of disk space and can be loaded up
by grldr to form a Real Mode virtual memory disk much faster than an
uncompressed disk image file. This is done by using the win32 version
of gzip utility, available at:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net
or
at:
http://www.disklessangel.com
The
version tested to be workable for the present purpose is 1.3.5.2170.
User can try other versions as well. After downloading the gzip
software package, one can unzip it into C:\gzip subfolder for use.
One
can open the DOS Windows under WinXP and run the command for
compressing the 850m.dsk file into 850m.gz file as shown in the
following screen:
And
one can see the difference in size of disk space these files take up
as shown below:
So
to speak, loading a 850m.gz file is about 1000 times faster than
loading a 850m.dsk file. So if there is much blank disk space in a
disk image file, it is always advisable to gzip it for grldr loading.
On
re-booting by selecting the third entry in the screen above, user
enters into the grldr boot-up screen below:
By
selecting the first entry of the grldr boot-up screen above, grldr
will load up the 850m.gz file to form a Real Mode virtual memory disk
of 850 Mb and then the user is returned to the ntldr boot-up screen
on Page 1. The user can then select the first entry to boot up newly
set-up WinXP on the second partition of the hard disk. Diskless Angel
Virtual SCSI Controller takes over and manages under Protected Mode
the virtual memory disk thus formed by grldr.
Opening
Windows Explorer, one can see in the following screen that the
virtual memory disk managed by Diskless Angel Virtual SCSI Controller
appears as Local Disk F: and it is in FAT32 format in the size of 848
Mb.
By
formatting it into a compressed NTFS volume, user can thus double the
size of this drive and double the value of the precious Random Access
Memory space.
F:
drive is formatted into compressed NTFS volume in the screens on Page
13 and 14.
|
