Since we've already gone here... > How about useing an external CD drive to do the install? Easier, > unless the program requires a CD to run. It probably will. And CDEmu + gCDEmu are easy to use and install. Personally, I avoid optical media whenever possible. I make images of my originals and store them on my external hard drive. The originals go in a drive once. That way they don't get scratched. And I have a backup if the disc is lost, damaged, or destroyed; which they shouldn't because I leave them in a cabinet and use the images instead. A loaded image is mounted instantly, whereas a physical disc takes a while to rev-up, assemble frames into sectors, apply error correction, extract digital data from analog data, fight to maintain constant linear velocity, and all the other uniquely weirdly slow things they do. I don't have to face the organizational hazard of optical discs. I don't have to get up, get my optical disc "book", flip through, get the disc I want, put it in the computer, and reverse the process to put it back. That would defeat the purpose of having files on a computer. Of course, there is the chance of accidental image file deletion, or the hard drive that was storing them to otherwise loose one or more than one image file. So the discs in the cabinet aren't pointless. And md5 hashes are your friend. Jake
