CDs, VMWare and Ubuntu...

The Problem:
The other day I had a situation where I got a CD image (ISO) that I needed to grab the data (a backup of a Windows file-folder structure) from - quickly. Unfortunately I didn't have spare blank CD although I did have a CD writer in my laptop. So in short : How do you access the data in an ISO CD image file without burning the image onto a physical CD

A Solution:
With time running out I suddenly remembered that I had a VMWare based Ubuntu virtual machine on my hard drive. I've been using VMWare a lot these days - at work, at play and I'm finding interesting ways to use virtualisation every day.

VMWare users will know that it has a real neat feature that allows a virtual machine to "see" a CDROM drive that takes its data from one of the following :

• The real physical CD drive attached to the host machine
• The ISO image file of any CD
  

Firing up VMWare with the virtual machine, I set it up so that the virtual machine's CD would use my ISO image file as the source of data. When I started the File Explorer in Ubuntu, by virtue of VMWare's magic and Ubuntu's transparent handling of multi-platform file systems - I could simply copy the files from the virtual CD and paste to a shared Windows folder. Not only was this a real life-saver - but a great eco-friendly workaround as well - I didn't have to waste energy and material creating a CD that I'd simply throw away after 1 use.