Disk Spanning Advanced Settings Panel
InstallShield 2020 » Release Wizard
Project:This panel is not available for InstallScript projects.
This panel prompts you to specify the number of disks that your setup requires. In addition, you can choose which features are on each disk. This panel is displayed only if you selected the Custom Disk Spanning option on the Disk Spanning Options panel.
Panel Options
Disk Mapping
This dialog lists all the features included in the release when it was first built. Because a release is designed to be a snapshot of your build settings, features created after a release will not be available for disk mapping nor built into the current release. You must start a new release in order to map the new features.
All features are on Disk 1 by default. To change the name of this disk, click the Rename Disk button and type in the new name of the disk. To add a new disk, click the New Disk button.
To transfer some of your features from one disk to another:
| 1. | Select the feature that you want to move. |
| 2. | Click the Move Up or Move Down button. The feature will move through the hierarchy of the current disk until there is nowhere left to go, at which time it will skip to the next disk, provided there is another disk for it to move to. |
Tip:Note the following when spanning your setup across multiple disks:
| • | A single feature cannot be spanned across multiple disks. If you have a feature that is too big to fit on one disk, you need to divide it into smaller features or subfeatures. |
| • | Any merge modules that are included in your setup must be on the first disk, because these files must be available when Windows Installer first processes the database (.msi file). |
If you add features to your setup after you have defined how you would like your setup to span across multiple disks, those features are automatically added to the last disk of your setup. You can add new disks to your setup at any time by using the Release Wizard.
Disk Prompt
To indicate the prompt you want displayed to end users when the next disk needs to be inserted:
| 1. | Select a disk in the Disk Mapping section. |
| 2. | Do one of the following in the Disk Prompt field. |
| • | Type the prompt that you want to display to end users. |
| • | Click the ellipsis button (...) to display the Select String dialog and select a string to use as the prompt. |
Repeat for each disk except the last. The Release Wizard automatically creates a string-table entry for the Disk Prompt value, so you can provide a translated string for each language your setup program supports.
The string that is displayed comes from a number of sources throughout your project, as described below:
| 1. | The complete prompt originates in the Error table (exposed in the Direct Editor) as Error record 1302. |
| 2. | This value in turn comes from your project’s string entries, and the default value for English reads “Please insert the disk: [2].” |
| 3. | Windows Installer resolves [2] with the value of the property DiskPrompt, which is set to [1] in the Property Manager. |
| 4. | Finally, Windows Installer evaluates [1] to the string you enter into the Disk Prompt field. |
In most cases you should enter the same name as the disk volume (below). For example, assuming the defaults are unchanged, a Disk Prompt entry of Disk8 would cause the user to be prompted with “Please enter the disk: Disk8.”
Disk Volume
Select a disk and then enter the name for the resulting disk image folder. Repeat for each disk.
When you are building your release image for removable media (such as CD-ROM), be sure to create the media with the same volume names specified here.
If you leave the names as DISK?, the Release Wizard numbers the disks sequentially (for example, DISK1, DISK2, and so on).
Tip:Notice that the default name of the volume is in all uppercase letters. It is a good idea to keep the names as uppercase to accommodate media types, such as CD-ROM, which require volume names in that format.
See Also