Cannot Mount Split Disk Image In Read Only Mode
Hello all,
I have an issue mounting disk images that have been split. Usually, I create non-split images and store them to USB external drive. But having very large (100 GB+) files creates much fragmentation on the drive. So, in order to cut down on fragmentation, I started splitting the disk images into 2 GB chunks using the file splitting option in the create a backup wizard.
Now, strangely, I cannot mount the image in read only mode. I get the "Cannot assign drive letters" error.
The image can be mounted in the read/write mode fine.
I'm using ATI build 7046. I've tried rolling back to previous builds, but to no avail.
O.S. is Vista HP x64.
Split image archives are also password protected, all archives for the image are in a single folder.
Any ideas on how to mount password protected, split-archive disk images in read only mode?
How many splits are in the backup?
What type of image is it (Full, Incremental, or Differential)?
Does the problem happen on all split images regardless of the number of splits or just certain ones?
Does it happen if the image isn't password protected?
Thanks guys for your input.
I appreciated the clarification on the fragmentation issue.
Here's some more data.
The images are full backups.
To test out solutions, I created a split, password protected, full backup 80 GB drive image and it works fine. Can be mounted both read only and read/write.
But the much larger, 200 GB full backup split image refuses to mount in read only mode.
Tomorrow I'll create some non password protected, file-split drive images and see what happens. For now, sleep.
Slightly off topic here but I'd like to suggest that splitting the files to minimize fragmentation isn't really going to buy you much. Fragmentation just doesn't affect computer use very much, despite what the defrag makers might have one believe. In an hour of intensive disk operation you might save a few seconds at best. And during most computer operations other activiies will reduce the impact of defragging even more.
If your backups are on a disk that you use for other things and those other things require extremely minimized fragmentation, then consider getting another, separate disk for the backups or, if you are set on defragging, at least use a defragger, like Perfectdisk or such, that can be set to run in background mode during idle time. Then you'd still get the wear and tear on the drive, and you still won't gain much in terms of speed, but you won't have to deal with so many files for each backup -- you're talking about liek 50 files per backup, right?