Writing optical discs using IMAPI 2 in powershell

  • Article

Hello,

Today I’m going to show how to use Image Mastering API (IMAPI2) in powershell. I’m using that technique when need quickly to burn some data, in format, which is not exposed by default in Explorer. This also can be useful if you are developing some code on IMAPI2 and need some proof of concept, if that can be done using build-in windows image mastering API.

IMAPI2 is written using COM, so no additional wrappers/interops required in order to get it working in powershell. The advantage of IMAPI is the possibility to write to different medias, for example to CDRW So, let’s begin:

First of all you'll need to build in memory file system image, which will contain your files. There are few steps to achieve that:

  1. Create file system object

    • PS C:\Temp> $fsi = New-Object -ComObject IMAPI2FS.MsftFileSystemImage

    • Select appropriate settings like File System type, revision and so on

    • To view current state of any object you can just type its name in PowerShell:

      PS C:\Temp> $fsi

    • PS C:\Temp> $fsi.FileSystemsToCreate = 7

    • PS C:\Temp> $fsi.VolumeName = "MyImage"

  2. Add files to your file system:

    • PS C:\Temp> $fsi.Root.AddTreeWithNamedStreams("C:\test\imt\data\2tracks")

  3. Create result stream, that will contain your data in required format:

    • PS C:\Temp> $resultimage = $fsi.CreateResultImage()
    • PS C:\Temp> $resultStream = $resultimage.ImageStream

Actually at this step you can stop and save resulted image to the local hard disc, this will be a pure iso image.

To perform writing disc recorder needs to be initialized:

  1. Enumerate available recorders through MsftDiscMaster2
    • PS C:\Temp> $dm = New-Object -ComObject IMAPI2.MsftDiscMaster2
  2. Create DiscRecorder object
    • PS C:\Temp> $recorder = New-Object -ComObject IMAPI2.MsftDiscRecorder2
  3. Initialize recorder with unique id from discmaster2
    • PS C:\Temp> $recorder.InitializeDiscRecorder($dm.Item(0))

And Formatter, which will be used to format you filesystem image in appropriate way for recording onto your media and write data using your recorder:

  1. Create object
    • $df2d = New-Object -ComObject IMAPI2.MsftDiscFormat2Data
  2. Set up recorder
    • PS C:\Temp> $df2d.Recorder = $recorder
  3. Put client name, which will be shown for other applications, once you'll start writing
    • PS C:\Temp> $df2d.ClientName = "MyScriptBurner" Now you set up everything needed, and can start burning, just call Write from DiscFormat2Data:
  4. $df2d.Write($resultStream)

That's it! You can write data using full capabilities of IMAPI, and not even write a line of C++ code in realtime. For me it seems really useful, when you just need to write couple media, and see no way to perform to do it through standard explorer interface, and is not willing to write whole application just to perform that!

Hope this helps in Windows Image Mastering API exploring.

Mikhail