Please help!

[Burnie Burnerson]

If there is one file I don't understand its MDS/MDF? I hear of people liking them and was wondering how they use them. Do they sort of act like an .exe? Thanks for any help you guys.

[spidross01]

They are image files mate of a cd/dvd, used by people when backing up there legally owned discs bud, Alcohol 120% supports both i beilieve and is my favourite for creating images of discs but probably not everyones

[GLH]

MDS/MDF is the standard image file format of Alcohol 120% .

[Burnie Burnerson]

They're similar to cue/bin files then? People use .mds/.mdf to make what they call a mini image right? So procedurally you mount the .mdf with daemon tools and/or burn with alcohol 120%, install. Is that correct so far? This is the part I don't get do I now mount the .mds and play? I've heard people say they save space on your hard drive how is that? Basically I bought Civ 4 and there's no fixed exe/no cd crack so I thought I'd try to use a mini image.

[GLH]

There are MiniImages & MaxiImages.
For CIVILIZATION 4 there is only the possibility to play it with an MaxiImage (~2 GByte).
To let the image not take away so much space on your hd, people turn on WindowsCompression (Properties of the file) so it only use 1 MByte on your HD.

[GLH]

...oh and bin/cue are not the same as mdf/mds.
Because in MDF-file are mor informations about the cd/dvd (important for the copy protection !!!).