TinyXP file size 3.18GB???

[wchill]

See title.
Was installing TinyXP on an ancient computer. Since I am going to make a multiboot DVD/USB drive, I took a look at how all the stuff fit on the disc, and guess what?
It somehow does yet it doesn't!
733898752 bytes (699.9MB) is the ISO size.
Select all the files in the TinyXP ISO (burn and then look).
It gives me 3.18GB (3424586320 bytes)?!?
Google didn't turn up anything...

Anyone have any ideas on why this is so? It seems unusual that one can fit 9 different builds of TinyXP and all the other stuff on 700MB anyway...
I also have a hunch this applies to TinyVista/Tiny7 too...

 

[Elritha]

That does sound weird. Are you sure it wasn't compressed first? It would be possible to have 9 different similar builds compressed down small in a single archive. Only thing I can think of right now.

 

[wchill]

9 different builds of XP do not fit in a 700MB disc.
I'm too lazy to provide screenshots though >_>

There's also Hiren's Boot Disc, Damn Small Linux and SpinRite 6.0 on there, not to mention drivers for everything except videocards, Firefox/IE7/WMP11/Flash installers, and all XP service packs and updates up to late 2008 slipstreamed into all the builds.

 

[VashTS]

i thought about getting this build, but there are things i'd rather not have or install myself. it seems great though. and hiren's boot cd is totally awesome. awesome to the max

 

[wchill]

I'm still curious as to how you can fit all this stuff on a 700MB CD...

 

[Captin]

Microsoft invented an on-the-fly compression system as used in early versions of Microsoft Office, where you can get all 7 cd's of office onto 1 disk. When you drag all the files into a folder on your hard drive there seems way too much data to fit on 1 cd, about 4gb.

The same compression system is still used, you can download the relevant dos commands from the microsoft web site.

 

[velocity37]

Identical files are linked. Therefore, if there are 9 copies of notepad.exe, it will only take up a bit more space than storing one copy. With 9 different copies of XP, it would make sense that many files are identical.

 

[wchill]

These both make sense - I do know about symbolic links in Windows and thought that they were somehow related to this. I never knew you could use them in CDFS though.
If anyone knows how to set this kind of system up on an external USB HD, it would be very much appreciated. I plan on having every single version of Windows on there, not to mention various Linux builds, Hiren's and other stuff.

 

[Glacius0]

Aside from what's already been said;

1. Packing files simply compresses it by a lot.
2. Windows creates a page file which is used as virtual memory when your RAM is full. Windows reserves a certain amount (around 1 gb, not sure) of space for this purpose. So there's not actually any data in it, it's just there for when it's needed. See http://www.pcmech.com/article/optimize-win...emory-settings/

 

[wchill]

Aside from what's already been said;

1. Packing files simply compresses it by a lot.
2. Windows creates a page file which is used as virtual memory when your RAM is full. Windows reserves a certain amount (around 1 gb, not sure) of space for this purpose. So there's not actually any data in it, it's just there for when it's needed. See http://www.pcmech.com/article/optimize-win...emory-settings/

#2 doesn't apply in the first place - we're talking about how to fit 3.18GB of data on a 700MB disc. RAM has almost nothing to do with it.
#1 doesn't work unless the compression is transparent, on-the-fly and it will work with anything and everything that would ever need to access the disc.

 

[velocity37]

This thread should be very relevant to your interests. There's apparently a utility that can identify identical files and automatically hardlink them, but for NTFS only.

Linking files in ISOs is a relatively obscure feature, since ones first thought would be "why the hell are there several identical copies of files?", but there are a few utilities that can do it. PowerISO, as I've just learned, automatically does this. I first learned about it when dealing with Xbox images way back. Shenmue II, a dual-layer game, could be made to fit on a single layer disc by simply linking identical files.

 

[wchill]

Well I knew about the linking for NTFS, but getting them linked in CDFS/UDF seemed a lot harder.
I'll check it out, thanks a lot.

Now I have to figure out how to do the same thing on a FAT32 formatted flash drive.