Look at this ISO (160k download size):
*geocities.com/cyberdony2k/iso.zip
When you decompress it, you will see a rar inside which there is an iso with the size of 5.18Mb, when you mount it, it will show that the CD has a size of 5.18Mb, but when you see the Properties of its contents, you will see it has a size of 933Mb. You can burn this iso to any mini CD. How is it possible?? The contents!!
Yes, this cd contains only two different files, all other files are just duplicates (MD5 duplicates, ie having same MD5 as MD5 is only checked during making of the iso).
It took me about 3 hrs to make this ISO, just for demonstration purpose. But I just wanted to show how it is done.
Only one file is stored and all others are just links, though they don't look like one.
This can be done by a feature in mkisofs called -follow-links. Follow this tut to see how:
1. For testing, just make a directory c:\test.
2. Now, copy any file, lets say oembios.bin (about 12Mb) from c:\windows\system32 to this folder c:\test.
3. Now create a shortcut by selecting New>Shortcut from the Right-Click context menu. Browse for the file c:\test\oembios.bin. 4. Or, just right-click copy c:\test\oembios.bin and "paste shortcut" there to create shortcut.
5. Repeat step 3 or 4 a few more times and make some more shortcuts to the same file c:\test\oembios.bin.
6. Download and unpack mkisofs (you can find it literally anywhere, search Google for "mkisofs download").
7. Run from the mkisofs, this command in dos mode (yes, cmd): "mkisofs -follow-link -output great.iso c:\test".
Now, you should get a file great.iso which is only 12 mb in the same directory from where you ran mkisofs. Mount this file in a virtual drive or just burn it on a blank CD and you will see that the total size of all the files in the CD is n times the size of oembios.bin, if you had created n-1 shortcuts.
If you wish to create CDs such as WinXP 2 in 1 (one Home and other Professional) and such, you can use this method as many files are common in that case. The resulting ISO will fit onto only one CD. But with no common files, this wont work.
However, identifying and creating shortcuts for all the common files is a little tooo tiresome for such projects, so there is a tool called "Duplicate File Linker". This will do the checking and will create links by deleting the duplicate files. This is available for download in the site:
*bootcd.narod.ru
Hope this was helpful.