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I'm looking for some tool that, given a zip/rar/tar/* archive file, mounts it as a new Windows drive. Some tools are WinMount or WinArchive, but I need one that allows me to write/create/delete files as well as read. That is, just as if it were a USB stick or something like that. The file doesn't need to be compressed, just archived is fine. Thanks a lot!

haimg
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caerolus
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    I don't know if such software exists, but for must compression and archiving methods; removing or changing any part of any file will take at least as long as creating a new archive from scratch. – Eroen Dec 13 '11 at 15:56
  • It doesn't need to be compressed, just archived is fine. – caerolus Dec 13 '11 at 16:00
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    Could you use a virtual disk, for example a VHD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHD_(file_format) )? Should be supported natively in windows 7. – Eroen Dec 13 '11 at 16:08
  • Yes! didn't know these were supported natively by Windows 7. The problem was having to synchronize tens of thousands of files between machines..so I figured having them in a single file would be easier. Thank you! – caerolus Dec 13 '11 at 16:29
  • @Eroen Still, if there was a way of doing this with zip, rar, tar or whatever, it'd be great in terms of portability and ease of use. – caerolus Dec 13 '11 at 16:50
  • See [unix.SE:168807](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/168807) for a similar question for Linux. – n611x007 Sep 29 '16 at 16:50
  • @caerolus it would be an extreme PITA to use those **compressed** formats as "disk clones". Tarballs are already kind of better then, but since they lack indexing it's still sub-bar for this use-case. – mirh Jul 11 '17 at 12:50

2 Answers2

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Try Pismo File Mount. Its freeware, supports zip, and ISO, but not .rar

Simon Sheehan
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yoshco
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  • Apparently Prismo can mount 7zip only if it is LZMA? The 'WinArchiver' mentioned by @zackrspv on the other hand seems to support any 7z format (?). – Glenn Slayden Jan 02 '18 at 21:35
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There are a few utilties out there that can do this, but I use this one:

Win Archiver Virtual Drive

Essentially, you can mount any supported type of archive (zip, rar, 7z, iso, etc), to any # of drives you want, and they act just like regular drive.

Quite useful:

Win Archive Virtual Drive

The image above shows drive K -> O; drive K is actually a mounted RAR file for a .NET project :)

Community
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zackrspv
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    doesn't seem to support write operations. – Quonux Mar 31 '17 at 19:04
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    @Quonux that would be almost impossible in general case. It's very hard to update archive contents without massive writing overhead other than to append new files. – Euri Pinhollow Jul 14 '18 at 10:48
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    I would argue that it depends on the compressor and its format. It works fine under certain assumptions. One industry case where a online(chunked) compression works is in the Oracle database - https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/compression/advanced-compression-wp-12c-1896128.pdf – Quonux Jul 27 '18 at 23:48