Last week we asked you to share your favorite disk image tools, then we rounded up the five most popular responses for a vote. Now we "re back to highlight your favorite. DAEMON Tools led the pack by a comfortable margin with 40% of the vote.
Softpedia.com DAEMON Tools Lite is a software solution that will impress you, especially thanks to its advanced features that can deal with virtually all image formats on the market. Reliable application that creates virtual drives on your computer, providing you with the possiblity to emulate CDs and DVDs for instant access.
PCWorld.com If you spend a lot of time swapping and hence waiting on CDs or DVDs to mount, Daemon Tools Lite is worth its weight in gold. Even if you don "t, it" s a program you should download to keep in your bag of tricks - you "ll find a use for it eventually.
Download.com The advantage is that you can burn the images you "re using with DAEMON Tools Lite right away or just test an image before burning it to see if it was created correctly. DAEMON Tools Lite works with most image formats.
Filecluster.com Pros
- Small and highly stable program.
- Low resource requirements.
- Simple and functional interface ...
Software.Informer.com DAEMON Tools Lite manages to be more comprehensive and feature-rich than many of its competitors. And that "s quite remarkable, especially considering that DAEMON Tools Lite is free while many of its competitors are not.
downloads.tomsguide.com As a disc imaging tool, Daemon Tools Lite "s free nature automatically makes it a lot better than many competing applications simply because it offers most of what they offer at the vastly reduced price of free.
www.techadvisor.co.uk When you have a disc that you know you "ll need to access regularly, then, DAEMON Tools Lite allows you to create an image in just a couple of clicks. This then shows up in its Image Catalog for speedy reloading later, and you can put the real disc away.
techgyd.com Daemon Tools Lite is one of the best software for emulating and organizing your disc images. The software is very easy to use and fulfills all your disc related requirements. The virtual drives support is amazing.
maddownload.com If you are looking for the best software to work with ISO, MDX, MDS, and MDX files? Well, you have come to the right place. DAEMON Tools Lite is an easy and ready to use downloadable software compatible with Windows. It is well known reputable software that gives you the power of having a DVD-ROM emulator right into the comfort of your own home.
GIGA.de Mit dem Daemon Tools Lite Download könnt ihr virtuelle Images erstellen, speichern und einbinden sowie virtuelle Laufwerke emulieren.
DAEMON Tools is the best program for creating virtual disks and performing their mounting (emulation), which significantly reduces disk space and allows you to create backup copies of all necessary files. The main difference between this program and many others is that the developers of the utility put the interests of their users much higher than everything else. This is evidenced by the constantly updating versions of the program, which is becoming more and more convenient to use and universal in application. The main advantages of the utility include:
- the ability to create images (CD / DVD / Blu-ray) as a file and mount them.
- the ability to replace the physical wear and tear of all types of disks.
- convenient and clear interface will not make absolutely anyone use the program by all categories of users.
- allows you to use all possible image formats.
- Provides the ability to copy bootable discs, and also provides the ability to protect stored files with a password, which will ensure complete security for storing the file.
In order to be able to use the program, the following steps are required.
First you need to download and install the program on your personal computer:
After that, select the desired program components to use and determine the program installation folder. Installation will take a few minutes.
After installation, you need to launch the program and select the image creation tab, after which a window will open in which you need to select the parameters of the disk drive, recording speed, and the location of the new disk image. We select the file for the image and its format. It is advisable to indicate the maximum reading speed and, if necessary, you can specify a security password.
After finishing the selection of parameters, you need to click on the start button and the image will be created automatically to the previously specified folder.
Sufficiently user-friendly interface and ease of use are the main advantages of this program, which is designed to significantly secure and expand the range of capabilities of your disk images up to 4 different units, which will replace the need to save disks and fear their breakdown.
Virtual disks are software emulated devices that can be used to open virtual disk images. This is sometimes called the files obtained after reading information from physical media. The following is a list of programs that allow you to emulate virtual drives and disks, as well as create and mount images.
Daemon Tools is one of the most common programs for working with disk images and virtual drives. The software allows you to create, convert and burn files to discs, emulate drives for playing information from optical media. In addition to CD and DVD devices, the program can also create virtual hard disks.
Daemon Tools includes the TrueCrypt utility that allows you to create encrypted password-protected containers on your computer. This approach helps to preserve sensitive information and protect it from intruders.
Alcohol 120%
Alcohol 120% is the main competitor of the previous reviewer. The program, like Daemon Tools, is able to remove images from disks, mount them into emulated drives and write files to discs.
There are two main differences: the software allows you to create images from files and folders, but is not able to emulate the HDD.
Ashampoo Burning Studio
Ashampoo Burning Studio is a combine for working with CDs and their images. The program is focused on converting, copying and recording audio and video to discs, creating covers for discs.
One of the key features is the ability to create archives with backup copies of files and folders, from which, if necessary, you can restore important information.
Nero
Nero is another multifunctional multimedia processing program. Able to burn ISO and other files to discs, convert multimedia to various formats, create covers.
A distinctive feature is the presence of a full-fledged video editor, with which you can perform editing: cutting, applying effects, adding sound, and also creating a slide show.
UltraISO
UltraISO is a program designed exclusively for working with disk images. Allows you to take images from physical media, including hard drives, convert and compress the finished files.
The main task of the program is to create images from files and save them to a computer or write them to discs or flash drives. Among other things, the program has a function to create a virtual drive for mounting images.
PowerISO
PowerISO is a program similar in functionality to UltraISO, but with some differences. This software can also create images from physical disks and files, edit ready-made ISOs, "burn" discs and emulate virtual drives.
The main difference is the grabbing function, which allows you to digitize music recorded on an audio CD with high quality and losslessness.
ImgBurn
ImgBurn is a software aimed at working with images: creating, including from files on a computer, checking for errors and recording. It does not have a pile of unnecessary functions and solves only the problems mentioned above.
DVDFab Virtual Drive
DVDFab Virtual Drive is an extremely simple program designed exclusively for creating a large number of virtual drives. It does not have a graphical interface, so all actions are performed using the context menu in the system tray.
The programs presented in this review can be divided into two parts: the first is the software for working with images, the second is the virtual drive emulators. As you can see, most developers tend to combine both of these features in their products. Despite this, there are outstanding representatives in each category, for example, UtraISO is indispensable for creating and editing images, and Daemon Tools is great for emulating virtual media - CD / DVD and hard drives.
VirtualDVD - a small program, as the name of the application implies, creates a virtual disk drive in the Windows operating system. It is distributed by the authors completely free of charge without restrictions, both in terms of functionality and time. This emulator has support for the Russian language, both during installation and in the interface, if I may say so, since there is no interface as such.
DAEMON Tools Lite - lightweight on features and some functions, free edition of the program, the purpose of which is to create virtual drives in the operating system. One of the main features of the application is the ability to create disks, more precisely, to emulate virtual disk images. The application can safely create CD images as well as DVD discs. DAEMON Tools support for many modern or popular, in general, widespread image formats, allows this software to be as ...
Alcohol 52% - one of the most famous disk drive emulators, the program creates a virtual CD / DVD drive in the system. Subsequently, you can insert either the created disk image, or an existing previously created one, into the virtual disk drive. The use of virtual devices has a number of significant advantages over physical devices. The main such advantages include reading speed and reliability. When used at home, the user can fully appreciate the benefits of a virtual drive.
WinCDEmu - a free emulator of a CD, DVD or BD drive, the program is distributed freely, without restrictions, moreover, it is open source. With this small tool, the user will be able to mount into a virtual CD ROM a CD image of such popular formats as ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS / MDF, CCD, IMG. This is one of the easiest ways to quickly and easily mount a disk image into a virtual drive.
Virtual CloneDrive - creates a virtual CD / DVD drive that behaves in the system in the same way as a physical CD / DVD drive, up to 8 virtual CD-ROMs are supported, but it exists only virtually. Image files generated from CloneDVD and CloneCD can be mounted to a virtual drive from a hard drive or from a network drive and are used in the same order as if you would insert them into a normal CD / DVD drive.
DVDFab Virtual Drive - free virtual disk, is a virtual DVD / Blu-Ray drive emulator. The program can emulate up to 18 discs to work with DVD / Blu-Ray images created by DVDFab and other programs. For example, to play a Blu-ray backup on a computer with PowerDVD 8 or higher, you need to use DVDFab to back up the Blu-ray ISO image file, and use DVDFab Virtual Drive by mounting the image to the drive created by the program, and then PowerDVD will play yours, for example a movie. DVDFab Virtual Drive is free and does not require any costs.
Disk2vhd - a small program that will make it very easy to make a virtual disk in VHD format from a real one. You can use this virtual disk in Hyper-V or Virtual PC. The utility was created by experts in the field of system tools, Mark Rusinovich and Bryce Cogswell, programmers from NirSoft. This little tool can be very useful for administering Windows systems. What is this utility for? If you are the administrator of the aforementioned operating systems, then, probably, you have more than once encountered problems that led to contacting support ...
Users who found the early "zero" probably remember the days when films, computer games, programs and music were delivered to our computers only using the CD / DVD discs widespread at that time. No one knew about free downloading of data on the Internet, torrents and youtube. The situation was rescued by optical drives, with the help of which information was transferred to the hard disk of the computer.
The rapid development of Internet technologies has called into question the need to have such a component as a "floppy drive". In today's stationary systems and laptops, you rarely see a drive. All because of virtual disks, which supplanted the "blank" and became common. However, not everyone made the comfortable transition to the new technology. In this article, we will try to correct this situation and explain in detail the essence of the creation process, the nuances of use and other questions that have repeatedly arisen from everyone who does not know how to use a virtual CD ROM.
When you may need it
Many may doubt the idea of \u200b\u200busing the innovation that has taken root to some and simply continue to use the optical drive, rewriting images and information with it on physical media. However, the archaic version loses in some cases, the most common of which are:
- Missing or defective drive. Any part does not have an eternal life. Sooner or later, a problem may arise, and it’s good if it does not happen at the most necessary moment (which, according to the “law of meanness”, happens often). In addition, a "system manager" who receives a disc with information from you may simply not have an optical drive. But a virtual CD-ROM is on any modern PC (if you devote some time to creating it).
- Multichannel. I rarely came across computers in which there were several drives at once. Users who often work with recording and reading discs had to constantly rearrange CD / DVD. There are no such problems with virtual disks, which means you can work with several at the same time.
- Convenience of data transfer. To exchange information recorded on a "blank", you need to personally transfer the media to the receiving party. In the case of virtually recorded images, the transfer is carried out online, over the Internet.
Creating a virtual CD-ROM
To read virtual images (iso files; mdf, bwi, mds and others), you need to create a virtual CD-ROM that, like an optical drive, reproduces (emulates) data from the drive. You can make a virtual disk using special software, such as Daemon Tools, Virtual Drive, Their principle of operation is identical, and the functionality is largely similar. As an example, we took the last of the listed ones, since its capabilities and tools are very easy to cope with even for a user far from such processes.
- First, download the installer for the Alcohol 120% program from the link from the Yandex disk, or on the developer's official website. Install it on your computer.
- We launch the program. First of all, we need to create a virtual CD drive. To do this, in the "Settings" section, select the option "Virtual disk".
- In the menu that opens, manually select the number of created virtual disks. We confirm the result by clicking on the OK button.
The drive has been successfully created, which we can observe in the "Device" panel or in the "My Computer" folder.
- Now let's open the finished image. To do this, select the "File" tab, and in the menu that opens, click on "Open ..." (or simply use the Ctrl + O key combination).
- Find the image file we need, select it with LMB and click on the "Open" button.
The image has been added to the library for processing.
- Now you need to read the file added earlier. To do this, select the RMB image, and in the drop-down menu select the option "Mount to device".
Work is done. The result can be observed in the "Computer" folder, where the installer located in the virtual drive will be listed among the readers.
After the performed operations with the image, it is necessary to extract it from the virtual drive. To do this, using the Alcohol 120% program, in the menu of the available drives, select our BD-ROM with the right mouse button and select the function in the list "Dismantle image"... The disk will be empty again.
If you want to remove the virtual drive altogether, you must repeat the same steps as when creating it:
- In the available devices, click on the DVD / CD drive of the PKM. In the list that appears, click "Properties".
- Put the value "0" back in the section for selecting the number of virtual disks and click "OK".
Adding a virtual hard disk
The above possibilities have been available to many for a decade. The popularity of the virtual reader has led to a similar phenomenon called the virtual hard disk. This technology allows you to create a file (with the VHD extension), which is displayed in Explorer as a standard partition on a hard disk. Everyone decides the rationality of using a virtual drive: some thus reorganize free space on volumes, others even install the OS. Do not forget about the ability to create a secure file container, thus limiting information from attacks by other users.
We will create a virtual hard disk using standard Windows tools (this function is available in Windows 7, 8.1, 10 systems). However, a similar result can be achieved with the help of special software. Daemon Tools Ultra, as well as Disk2vhd, handle this task most effectively. These programs have separate sections dedicated to creating virtual disks (both drives and drives like HDDs).
- Open the Run service by simultaneously pressing the Win + R keys. In an empty line, enter the command diskmgmt.msc and click "OK".
- The service will open "Disk Management"... In the control menu, activate the "Action" tab, and in it select "Create virtual hard disk".
- In the window that appears, you need to specify the location of the file to be created, select the format (VHD / VHDX), and also determine the file extension option.
- The file has been created, but the disk has not yet been initialized. By clicking on the RMB dial, select the option "Initialize Disk".
- In the next window, you must specify the style of the section (we recommend the GUID if you intend to limit yourself to the standard capabilities of working with the allocated space).
Connecting the disk after restarting the PC
Unfortunately, working with VHD requires reconnecting the VHD / VHDX file after each session ends. Fortunately, we don't have to create a new disk, initialize a partition, and create a volume. To return a virtual disk to work (emulate data), you need to do the following:
We hope that with the help of our article you have learned how to create a virtual disk, and also determined the benefits of using it.
And also watch the video