With Windows XP recieving its final updates in the coming months, I've been looking into how I can get all three XP versions, with the latest updates, and basic drivers, onto a single CD. In the past I was able to do this simply by removing a few of the migration features and using hardlinking inside the ISO file, however, with some of the latest updates, a single XP edition has become too large for me to do this.
So, looking at my options, my plan is to fit a PE onto the disc and use WinNTSetup to perform the initial installation. At this point, I just need to get the XPs down to a substantially smaller size. I did some tests with 7z and WIM and got these results:
Total original size:
24,337 files, 442 folders
2.45 GB
Post-7zip Normal:
55% compression, 1.36GB
Post-WIM Compression:
45% compression, 1.10GB
The way I see it, separately I was able to get them both fairly small, using WIM's hardlinking, or using 7zip's compression, however, it's still not small enough. What I'm looking for is a compression scheme that performs internal hardlinking between identical files, and also performs basic, but quickly decompressable compression on each file. Ideally this compression scheme would also allow me to mount it as a drive or folder with some freeware program.
Any help is appreciated!
