Template for making a bootable CD

A 'template' in the form of a bootable drive is needed to make a bootable CD. There are basically three types of bootable CD:

  1. Floppy Emulation: Floppy Emulation requires a bootable floppy to make the bootable CD. When it is booted, the CD behaves as if the floppy were inserted in Drive A. The drive letters increment, so that Drive A: corresponds to the bootable CD. Floppy disk drive A: can be accessed as B: after booting. The size of the start data is basically limited by the capacity of the floppy disk (e.g.: 1.44 MB).
  2. Harddisk Emulation: A bootable hard disk is required to create the bootable CD. When booted, the CD behaves as if the CD were Drive C:. Its 'old' Drive C: becomes Drive D:, its old Drive D: becomes Drive E: and so forth. Up to 640MB of boot data can be stored on a CD with this type of bootable CD. Of course this means that the template drive must not be bigger than 640 MB or it will not 'fit' on the CD. So if you have a 2 GB hard disk with only one 2 GB partition for example, you will not be able to create a bootable CD from it without first re-partitioning your hard disk in a suitable way. This is a problem of principle and has nothing to do with Nero.
  3. No Emulation: This feature is only intended for use by out-and-out experts who require no floppy or harddisk emulation and wish to install their own device drivers. 'Windows 2000 CD' uses this method, for example.

    For Nero the template for making a bootable CD can be either a logical drive (e.g. the C: drive) or a so-called 'Image File' of a drive. Image files contain the contents of a drive sector by sector as a file. Image files can be created with packages such as 'Norton Disk Editor' or 'WinImage' and are usually very large (as large as the drive from which they were created, obviously!).


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