FFVII running on HDD

[Panga]

Is there anyway to play FFVII completely off the hard drive? So that the CD's are only used for the cdcheck.

[Covarr]

Do a full install, copy the movie files from each disc to your hard drive, and then change the registry to match. I'm not quite sure what registry entry needs changed, but there's a tutorial somewhere that explains it better.

[Chrisu]

This works, but the game checks for the CDs anyway. But there's a Solution: Create an CD-image with f.i. Nero and Name the CD FF7DISC1 or FF7DISC2 or FF7DISC3, then create the image without a file on them. When you insert this "dummy-images" into a virtual image drive and change the data path in the registry to your virtual drive, the game will accept the images as CDs. If you have the "Run Movies from Harddrive-Hack" installed, you can play without CDs.

[steven]

This works, but the game checks for the CDs anyway. But there's a Solution: Create an CD-image with f.i. Nero and Name the CD FF7DISC1 or FF7DISC2 or FF7DISC3, then create the image without a file on them. When you insert this "dummy-images" into a virtual image drive and change the data path in the registry to your virtual drive, the game will accept the images as CDs. If you have the "Run Movies from Harddrive-Hack" installed, you can play without CDs.

Yah that works pritty good. It worked for me b4 I reformated my pc.

[miracle.flame]

Uuuhh... I may warn you that this way you won't be able to get past the disc2 and disc3 check later. At least I couldn't. Try to load some savegames from later disc2 and disc3 stages (try areas that are definetly not on disc1 - so a world map won't suffice; try northern crater or something like that).

But if you want to play the whole game from single big image without any cd swappings, apply some universal no-cd crack patch for ff7.

[Aaron]

Uuuhh... I may warn you that this way you won't be able to get past the disc2 and disc3 check later. At least I couldn't. Try to load some savegames from later disc2 and disc3 stages (try areas that are definetly not on disc1 - so a world map won't suffice; try northern crater or something like that).

Field data on all of the discs is identical, only the movies are different.

[miracle.flame]

You're right the files are identical but somehow the CD-check occurs. Try this save.
If you load "the bottom of nothern cave" without inserted CD (or image) labeled "FF7DISC3" you shall be prompted for disc 3. Paradoxly if you load the most-top save "Gold Saucer Area" there will be no prompt even the plot is quite advanced.
At least that's how it works for my images (or big single image) which are fresh from originals. My game checks the label and you can't have more labels for single image. So either you:

• swap the images when prompted (which accomplishes almost nothing)
• or you rename the label of your united image to the disc you're playing right now (not sure if it's possible without saving the whole file once again)
• or you patch your game with universal no-cd crack and the whole problem is solved

EDIT: Sorry I've read something wrong and thought Christian talked about single image... anyway I was talking about this unified single image - it's when you put all the files from three discs to a single image (it's less space consuming than having three separate images 'cause many files repeat themselves). Although that method Christian described is also efficient but I'm not sure if that ingame CD-check passes when there's still one label.