Virtual optical drive. How to create and use a virtual drive in Windows
), because it has all the necessary attributes for this. But still, the main attractiveness of the product lies precisely in the features of working with optical disk images.
Alcohol 120% allows you to create images of CD and DVD discs, can deal with some copy protections, and allows up to 31 virtual drives. However, even the simplest CSS encryption used in the production of licensed video products is beyond the capabilities of this program.
The main program management tools are located in the left sidebar. In image creation mode, you can divide a file into segments of arbitrary size. In addition, you can enable the mode of skipping read errors. There is a whole group of protections based on emulating disk damage. In the standard way, you will not be able to read its contents, since a reading error will occur in the most interesting place. Alcohol 120% allows you to skip such sectors while still creating an image file of the original disk.
Depending on the amount of source data, you will be offered different image formats. Standard CDs can be copied to CCD, CUE and ISO images, but if you are working with a DVD larger than 2GB, you will have to use the MDS format.
The next two sidebar menu items allow you to burn an optical disc from an image on your hard drive, as well as make an exact copy of the CD/DVD media.
Alcohol 120% contains a tool for searching images inside the local file system. You select the types of images you are looking for, and also specify the search area. In addition, you can switch to using additional extensions. In this case, files of any type will be included in the search.
The program allows you to independently change the letters of the logical partitions of virtual drives, set the DVD regional code, output analog audio to any virtual device (Direct Sound), and flexibly configure the burning modes of optical discs.
On the official project page you can also familiarize yourself with the Alcohol 52% program, which does not have its own optical disc recording module.
The program places its icon in the system tray. Left-clicking on the icon opens a list of all connected images, and also allows you to disable them altogether. Using the right mouse button you can call up the program properties.
The first item of the Virtual CD/DVD-ROM menu contains functions that allow you to specify the number of virtual drives, as well as manage the connection/disconnection of images. The Emulation menu contains a list of all available protections supported by the program. You can enable their emulation, either individually or all at once.
The program settings include only a few items. You can load the program when the operating system starts, automatically mount images, and use safe mode.
By default, the system tray icon is red. Depending on the formats of connected images and types of protection, the color may change to green and blue.
The last three guides reviewed 30 programs that were in one way or another related to copying information from optical media.
Over the past year, a positive trend has emerged in Russia: a gradual transition from rampant piracy to a more or less civilized use of licensed products. Official publishers have finally begun to pursue a clear and flexible pricing policy, making it accessible to the general public to watch licensed films. Often, a DVD with a licensed film costs the same as its pirated counterpart.
There is nothing more valuable than your health. They say that the cause of all diseases is our nervous system. If you are constantly worried about something, if you feel fear, remorse, then an exacerbation of many diseases is not far off. Constant fuss with low-quality screen copies and incomprehensible DVDRips, fuss around restrictions for free accounts on file-sharing servers, the wolf laws of peer-to-peer networks, mountains of unidentified blanks on the shelves - all this does not add to health and peace.
The other day I decided to download a movie from the Internet that I had been wanting to watch for a long time. When the download reached approximately halfway, the connection was lost, and the server did not support resuming. I was very upset and started to worry. But realizing that my experiences were not worth a penny, I got dressed and ran to the nearest store, buying a licensed disc there. The disk was protected from copying using CSS encryption, but I made a copy of everything on the hard drive using one of the programs discussed in the guidebooks. Suddenly, the disk gets scratched.
I really hope, friends, that you will not use the software described in the latest articles for illegal purposes. And this is not a matter of high morality. Just take care of yourself and your health.
CD/DVD disks are among the most popular external storage media, but working with them in practice is not always convenient, and there are many reasons for this. These disks must be inserted into the drive and data exchange with them is noticeably slower than with a hard drive. As a result, launching a program from a CD will take significantly more time. CD/DVD discs become unreadable if they have bad sectors or many scratches, and this will sooner or later happen during active use. For mobile users, another difficulty arises - when going on a business trip, they have to take with them the entire set of disks that may be required for work, which is also unpleasant, since it increases the size of their luggage. You can avoid such problems by copying information from CDs to a hard drive, but this option will not work for every program. For example, discs with games, licensed databases, educational programs, audio discs, etc. when copying them to a hard drive, they often refuse to work. In such cases, you will have to take a different route - create virtual CD/DVD drives on your computer and place images of frequently used disks in them. Technically, this involves performing two operations. First, you will need to create the necessary disk image files (that is, virtual CDs) - this can be done using programs for burning and copying CD-DVD discs (such as, for example, Nero Burning ROM) and save these images on your hard drive. And then you will have to use a special virtual drive emulator program, with which you will need to create the required number of virtual CD/DVD drives and connect a prepared disk image to each of them. As a result, you can work with virtual CDs in the same way as with real ones. Moreover, it will be much faster and more reliable. Why? Everything is very simple. On the one hand, access to information will be faster, since it will be read from a hard drive much faster than from a CD, and to launch a virtual disk you will not have to insert a real disk into a physical drive. On the other hand, the likelihood of losing valuable data as a result of disk failure will be reduced, because the CD/DVD disks themselves are not inserted into the drive, and therefore their surface does not wear out. Moreover, it will be possible to work with several disks simultaneously.
DAEMON Tools 4.30.0305
Developer: DT Soft Ltd.Distribution size: DAEMON Tools Pro Advanced and DAEMON Tools Pro Standard - 11 MB; DAEMON Tools Lite - 7.4 MB
Spreading: shareware DAEMON Tools is one of the most attractive solutions for emulating virtual drives in terms of functionality. This package is presented in three editions: DAEMON Tools Pro Advanced, DAEMON Tools Pro Standard and DAEMON Tools Lite. The DAEMON Tools Lite edition has the most modest capabilities - it does not have a graphical interface (access is done through the system tray) and allows you to create up to four virtual drives and mount images on them. The other two versions already have a convenient graphical interface and provide the creation of from 16 to 32 virtual SCSI devices, and DAEMON Tools Pro Advanced can also emulate two virtual IDE devices, which is important for connecting some copy-protected CD/DVD drives. As for the images themselves, all three solutions provide for the creation of images from CDs, and not only from regular ones (Audio CD, Video CD, Mixed Mode CD, CD-Extra, Video CD, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio formats are supported ), but also from copy-protected ones, including SafeDisc, SecuROM, LaserLock, RMPS, Hide CD-R, CD/DVD-Cops, ProtectCD, StarForce and Tages. At the same time, almost any image file formats are supported (B5T, B6T, BWT, CCD, CDI, CUE, ISO, MDS, NRG, PDI, ISZ). If desired, the images can be easily protected with a password. Pro versions also provide image editing, which allows you to add files to the image, as well as replace and delete them. Working with images is implemented very conveniently - you can add them to the collection by specifying them manually or selecting them from the list of those found during an automatic search (images created in the program itself are added to the collection automatically), and in the collection itself you can place images in subdirectories (this is more convenient for further orientation). When creating images, compression is provided, which will be very useful if there are a large number of images on disk, however, only MDS images can be compressed - images in other formats will first have to be converted to the MDS format (possible only in DAEMON Tools Pro Advanced). Demo versions of the program (Russian localization available) are fully functional and operational for 20 days. The cost of commercial versions varies - for DAEMON Tools Pro Advanced it is 39.90 euros, for DAEMON Tools Pro Standard it is 16.90 euros, and for DAEMON Tools Lite it is 14.90 euros. However, the DAEMON Tools Lite version for non-commercial use is free. Since the easiest to use utility is DAEMON Tools Lite, we will start with it. It does not have a graphical interface, so all operations in this utility are carried out through the system tray. Connecting virtual drives in DAEMON Tools Lite is as easy as pie. First, you will need to install the required number of virtual devices - right-click on the program icon in the system tray, select the Virtual CD/DVD-ROM command and specify the required number of drives.
And then sequentially mount a virtual disk for each of the drives, simply specifying the corresponding image files for them on the hard drive (command Virtual CD/DVD-ROM > "Drive..." > "Mount image"). To remove an image from a virtual drive, you will need the "Unmount image" command.
The technology for working with DAEMON Tools Pro is somewhat more complicated. The window of this utility is implemented in the form of three panels - the information panel and two windows: the image window and the drive window. The images window is designed to perform various types of operations on images, and the drives window allows you to manage physical and virtual CD/DVD devices.
The first step in DAEMON Tools Pro is to create a collection of images. If the images were created earlier and you have not yet forgotten which specific folder on the disk they are located in, then you need to click on the “Add images” button and immediately place them in the collection. If you don’t remember where they are, you will have to use the automatic search mode (the “Search for images” button).
If there are no images on the disk yet, you need to create them. To do this, insert the treasured disk into the CD/DVD-ROM, click on the “Create an image” button, select the appropriate physical drive (of course, if there are several drives) and, if necessary, change the disk reading settings on the “Drive” tab. And then on the “Image Catalog” tab, enter the name of the image and indicate the output format, after which they click on the “Start” button and after a couple of minutes they get the desired image.
After the collection is filled with images in one way or another, install the required number of virtual drives by clicking the “Add SCSI Virtual Drive” button the appropriate number of times - the connected drives appear in the program’s virtual drives window. It should be noted that one virtual drive is created automatically during the installation process of the program.
Then a virtual image is installed on each of the virtual CD/DVD devices. To carry out such an installation, you should activate the first image and use the “Mount image” command from the context menu, followed by specifying the desired virtual drive. After this, a similar operation will need to be carried out with all other images. If you need to remove an image from a virtual drive, use the "Unmount" command from the context menu.
Alcohol 120% 1.9.8.7612 and Alcohol 52% 1.9.8.7612
Developer: Alcohol SoftwareDistribution size: Alcohol 120% - 12.3 MB, Alcohol 52% - 11.5 MB
Spreading: shareware The Alcohol 120% and Alcohol 52% programs are one of the most popular solutions for creating virtual CD/DVD drives. Alcohol 120% includes all the functions of Alcohol 52% and additionally allows you to burn CDs and DVDs from image files or on the fly from source CDs. It is possible to record to several drives simultaneously. In terms of virtual drive emulation, the programs' capabilities are identical. With their help, it is easy to connect up to 31 virtual drives on your computer and mount virtual CDs on them in almost any image file format. Source images are added in the image search mode or automatically - the latter if they are created in the Alcohol environment. Supports multiple CD formats (CD-DA, CD+G, CD-ROM, CD-XA, Video CD, Photo CD, Mixed Mode, Multi-session CD, DVD-ROM, DVD-Video and DVD-Audio) and various protection systems, including SafeDisc 2/3/4, SecuROM NEW 4/5/7, LaserLock, Starforce 1/2/3/4, VOB ProtectCD V5. When emulating, you can ignore the media type, the physical signature of the disc being written to (RMPS), the presence of bad sectors, etc. The demo version of the program (there is a Russian localization) is operational for 15 days and has restrictions on the number of virtual devices created (there can only be six of them). The cost of the commercial version of Alcohol 120% is $50, Alcohol 52% is $27. In addition, there is also a completely free version of Alcohol 52% FE 1.9.5.4, which allows you to create up to six virtual devices. The Alcohol 120% and Alcohol 52% window is implemented in the form of one vertical and two horizontal panels. The vertical panel is located on the left side of the main program window and is an operations panel designed to quickly launch the main components of the program. The horizontal panels located on the right side of the main program window are working database browser windows that provide management of images, virtual drives and physical CD/DVD devices.
Emulating virtual CD/DVD drives in Alcohol 120% and Alcohol 52% requires three steps. At the first stage, a collection of images is formed. If images already exist, then you can connect them directly by simply right-clicking in a free area of the browser window, calling the "Add images" command from the context menu and specifying the desired images. Well, if you don’t remember where exactly the images are located on the disk, then you can use the image search (the “Search for images” operation in the “Basic operations” group), and only then connect the images.
If the image files do not exist on the disk, you will have to create them. It is not difficult to do this in Alcohol 120% (or in Alcohol 52%). To do this, you just need to activate the “Create Images” operation, select a physical drive (only if there are several drives), determine the data type and, if necessary, adjust the disk reading settings, and on the next screen enter the name of the image and click the “Start” button.
After forming a collection of images, virtual drives are connected - this is the responsibility of the “Virtual Disk” operation from the “Settings” group, after launching which you will need to determine the required number of virtual devices. You can also enable/disable the checkboxes “Remount images on system reboot” and “Mount image on Device 0 by double-clicking”. Enabling the first checkbox will ensure that virtual disks are saved in their virtual drives after rebooting or shutting down the computer. Enabling the second one will allow you to mount the image file by double-clicking on it into the first free virtual drive. After this, you will still need to activate the “File Associations” subsection and mark those extensions of the image files that are supposed to be mounted into virtual devices. The result of these manipulations will be the appearance in the lower right subwindow of the program, in addition to the physical CD/DVD devices, of a list of virtual drives that have appeared. By the way, it’s worth noting that one virtual drive can be created during installation of the program, unless, of course, you uncheck the corresponding box during installation.
Well, now all that remains is to mount virtual CDs on virtual devices using the “Mount to device” command from the context menu. You can mount the image faster by simply double-clicking on it, however, this is only provided that the “Mount image on Device 0 by double-click” checkbox was not disabled when connecting virtual drives. To remove an image from a virtual drive, use the "Unmount image" command.
Virtual CD 9.3.0.1
Developer: H+H Software GmbHDistribution size: 56.4 MB
Spreading: shareware Virtual CD is one of the most multifunctional (but also the most difficult to learn) solutions for emulating virtual CD/DVD-ROM devices, managing virtual CDs and organizing network access to them. The program allows you to create up to 23 virtual drives and connect image files to them in a fairly wide range of formats. These images can be created directly in the Virtual CD environment, connected based on the results of an automatic search, or directly manually. Working with collections of virtual CDs is implemented in the program taking into account the fact that their number can be large - therefore, images can be divided into categories, sorted, grouped, searched in the library, etc. When creating images (CD-ROM, DVD, Video CD, Super Video CD, Photo CD, Audio CD, CD-Text, CD-Extra, Mixed Mode CDs formats are supported), their compression is possible, and very effective. In addition, images can be converted to VC4 format and, if necessary, protected with a password. There is also an option for editing images, into which it is easy to add new files or delete unnecessary ones - this function can be useful not only when using image files on virtual drives, but also in the process of testing them before burning them to a real CD. The latter is also implemented in Virtual CD; in addition, the program allows direct copying of data from disk to disk and deletion of data from rewritable CDs/DVDs. The demo version of the program (there is no Russian localization) is fully functional and operational for 30 days, the cost of the commercial version is $39.95. Virtual CD is a combination of two interface modules - Toolbox and CD Management (both modules are called from the system tray, and Toolbox can also be launched from the Start menu). The Toolbox module provides direct access to all the main functions of the program.
The CD Management module provides management of virtual CDs and images.
In Virtual CD, it is more difficult to understand the options responsible for creating a collection, since they are scattered across different modules, and the total number of different settings is large. If we are talking about adding existing image files to the collection, then this can be done both through the Toolbox module and through the CD Management module. In the first case, open the Main Tasks in Virtual CD tab and launch the Find Virtual CDs automatic image search function.
In the second, call the Add command from the context menu and specify specific images from the folder.
You can also add a new virtual drive in two ways - using the Add/Remove Virtual Drives command, activating it from the system tray, or in the CD Management module, calling the Drive Editor command from the context menu. In both cases, a device selection dialog box opens, where additional drives should be enabled. By the way, if no more than four drives are required, then these operations will not be necessary, since by default the program automatically adds four virtual drives to the system during installation.
Mounting virtual CDs is easier, since this is done by simply dragging the image onto the drive in the CD Management window or installing the virtual CD on the drive through the system tray. The Eject command is responsible for removing an image from a virtual drive.
It should be noted that many operations in Virtual CD require the sequential opening of many windows (and this slows down the process) - you can speed up the work by assigning hotkeys to a number of actions, as well as by actively using system tray commands, duplicating the basic operations of the Toolbox and CD Management modules.
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.
MAME - an absolutely free product that will help you play old games on a modern computer that were supplied by developers for game consoles and slot machines. Literally the acronym stands for, Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with original arcade game disc images and disc data, MAME attempts to reproduce that game as accurately as possible on a more modern general purpose computer. MAME can currently emulate several thousand different classic arcade video games from the late 1970s to the present.
DAEMON Tools Lite - lightweight in capabilities and some functions, a 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, or rather, emulate virtual disk images. The application can safely create images of CDs as well as DVDs. DAEMON Tools support for many modern or popular, in general, widespread image formats allows this software to be the most...
VirtualDVD - a small program, as the name of the application implies, creates a virtual disk drive in the Windows operating system. Distributed by the authors completely free of charge without restrictions, both in functionality and time. This emulator has support for the Russian language, both during installation and in the interface, so to speak, since there is no interface as such.
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 drive. The use of virtual devices has a number of significant advantages over physical ones. The main advantages include reading speed and reliability. When used at home, the user can fully appreciate the benefits of a virtual drive.
WinCDEmu – a free CD, DVD or BD drive emulator, the program is distributed freely, without restrictions, moreover, it is open source. Using this small tool, the user will be able to mount a CD image of such popular formats as ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, IMG into a virtual CD ROM. 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 disk from a hard drive or from a network drive and are used in the same order as if you inserted 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 create a backup copy of the Blu-Ray ISO image file, and use DVDFab Virtual Drive, mounting the image into the drive created by the program, and then PowerDVD will play yours, for example, a film. DVDFab Virtual Drive is a free program that does not require any costs.
Disk2vhd - a small program that makes it very easy to make a virtual VHD disk from a real one. You can use this virtual disk in Hyper-V or Virtual PC. The utility was created by system tools specialists Mark Rusinovich and Bryce Cogswell, programmers at NirSoft. This small tool can be a very useful tool when administering Windows systems. What is this utility for? If you are an administrator of the above-mentioned operating systems, then you have probably encountered problems more than once that led to you contacting support...
It's no secret that the use of DVDs and CDs has been declining recently, since there are more convenient analogues: various flash cards, removable hard drives and other wonders of technology. However, a technology developed relatively long ago remains unaddressed - the creation of virtual drives and disks.
What is a virtual drive?
You should distinguish between virtual drives and virtual disks.
A virtual drive is a device that has the same functions as a physical drive: disc writing, reading, and so on.
A virtual disk is analogous to a disk that can be read or written using a virtual drive. Most often, the object of recording on a virtual disk is a so-called disk image, which is an iso file.
However, the virtual drive and disk cannot be moved, scratched, or folded into an envelope. These devices are virtual, that is, they do not physically exist. We emulate their presence in our computer.
What is a virtual drive used for?
There are a number of reasons why using virtual drives and disks is justified:
- The ability to quickly transfer a disc to a computer without spending money on buying a DVD disc.
- Maximum security. The actual disk or drive can be scratched, hit, or broken. Virtual devices do not have this threat.
- The ability to create as many virtual drives as you like, and even more so disks.
- Convenience of transmitting information over the Internet.
Thus, we get a flexible mechanism for writing, reading and transmitting information, without spending any money on purchasing additional drives and a bunch of disks; this approach is becoming outdated every day. You don’t have to bother with packaging disks, you don’t have to learn how to install and configure the drive in your computer. You just need to have Windows 7 or higher operating system installed on your computer.
How to create a virtual drive?
Having figured out what using virtual drives gives us, we move on to the most interesting stage - creating them on your computer.
Today there are a lot of programs that allow you to implement this. The most time-tested and easy to use are Alcohol 120 and UltraISO. We will analyze the use of both programs, after which everyone can decide for themselves which program is more convenient.
Virtual drive for Windows 7 using UltraISO
Download this program from the official or any other source. It is advisable to use the latest version 9.6.5, although using older versions is not critical.
During installation, at the stage of selecting additional tasks, you must check the box for “Install ISO CD/DVD emulator”
Ready. After installation, go to My Computer and see that the virtual drive has already been created:
Let's launch the program. In the upper left corner we see a disk image, which was also created automatically. To the right of it is shown its contents, which are still empty. Below is the directory of files on our computer, from here we can select the necessary files and send them to our virtual disk:
We see that the data has been added to the virtual disk directory. Go to File -> Save As:
Click on the “Mount to virtual drive” icon:
Make sure that the path to the file is set correctly and click “Mount”:
We go to My Computer, open the contents of the virtual disk and see that the file Pactioner.php is written to it:
Thus, in just a minute we created a virtual drive and mounted the disk image on it. The example uses a regular file; instead of it there could be, for example, some game that you need to emulate from disk, so as not to take out the disk every time and load it into a real drive. Recording such things looks the same way: select the game disk files in the directory, transfer them to a virtual disk, emulate it, and you're done. You no longer need a real disk.
Virtual drive for Windows 7 using Alcohol 120
Download and install the program. After installing the program, we see that Alcohol 120 separates physical drives from virtual ones:
Virtual drive F is ready to use; to do this, simply transfer the necessary ISO files to the field above and select the desired function. To burn the image to a real disk, select Image Burning Wizard. In this case, we want to emulate our image on a virtual drive, so we’ll add the same image that we created in UltraISO, right-click and select Mount on Device:
Ready. A new disk will open with the recorded file Pactioner.php:
Results
We looked at the theoretical basis of virtual drives and disks, and figured out the programs that allow you to use this technology. Undoubtedly, using these things will save your time and nerves, which is very important in the age of information technology.
