Mount compressed files as virtual folders

If you have some large archive files (zip, rar, iso), and just need to extract or update one single file,  it can be a little painful to have to extract the whole folder.  However,  with this free Windows tool you can easily mount the archive file as a folder,  and explore or write to it just like any normal folder.

Pismo file mount allows you to mount ZIP, ISO, CISO, CFS, ISZ, DAA, and PFO files as virtual folders within Windows.

Download the 1.5MB file, and simply install the program.   You can either mount an archive file by selecting the file in Windows Explorer and selecting Quick Mount.

Quick Mount will simply mount the archive file as a read only virtual folder within the parent folder.  This is by far the easiest way to use Pismo.

However, for more control over the mount point, and read/write access,  the control panel is provided, which also provides a list of all the current mounts.  Very useful if you want to unmount a file without having to hunt around for it.

To use the control panel,  select File > Open and select the file to mount.

From the control panel, you can alter the mount visibility to make the archive visible to the entire system, or a specific user.  The archive file can be mounted as Drive letter only if  you select to mount the file for the entire system.    You can also set the mount as read only, or with write access.

Batch Mount of Archive Files.

If you have many different archive files which you regularly access,  Pismo also provides a great command line feature which can be used in batch files.

To mount and unmount an archive file use the following commands:

pfm mount archive.zip
pfm unmount archive.zip

Download [via Pismo]