Virtual disk emulators. Virtual disk. What are the best disk drive emulator programs (CD-Rom)

CD/DVDs are among the most popular external media information, 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 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 their 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 the luggage. You can avoid such problems by copying information from CDs to a hard drive, but this option It won't 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 need to create necessary files disk images (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 saving 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 right number 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? It's very simple. On the one hand, access to information will accelerate, since hard drive it will read much faster than from a CD, and you won't have to insert a real disk into the virtual disk to run it. physical storage. 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 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'll have to use the automatic search(button "Search for images").

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 Software
Distribution 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 image management, 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 the 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 necessary 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 the collection of images is formed, virtual drives are connected - the operation " is responsible for this Virtual disk" from the "Settings" group, after launching which you will need to determine the required number of virtual devices. Here you can also enable/disable the checkboxes "Remount images when rebooting the system" and "Mount image on Device 0 by double click". Enabling the first checkbox will ensure that virtual disks 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 in virtual devices. The result of these manipulations will be the appearance in the lower right subwindow of the program, in addition to 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 "Dismount image" command.

Virtual CD 9.3.0.1

Developer: H+H Software GmbH
Distribution size: 56.4 MB
Spreading: shareware Virtual CD is one of the most feature-rich (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. It is also possible to edit images into which you can easily 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 throughout 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 you should enable additional drives. 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 active use system tray commands that duplicate the basic operations of the Toolbox and CD Management modules.

Read about how to create and work with disk images, as well as what programs you use in our article today.

Disk image. Areas of application

A disk image is a file containing full copy content and structure of data located on the drive.

In this case, a disk should be understood as any hard disk (HDD), floppy disk (FDD) or optical disk (CD/DVD) or Flash drive.

Advice! The main advantage virtual image, is the fact that the disk image contains absolutely all the information to duplicate the structure, content and location of the data of the storage medium, repeating its set of sectors and ignoring file system.

Virtual disks are used for the following purposes:

Backup.
Unlike conventional programs backup, which copy only those files to which there is access; if an image is created, in addition to the data itself, the bootloader and files that could be blocked by the OS will also be copied.
Software distribution. For distribution (including via the Internet) of operating systems (OS) and software (software) having large size(for example, BSD, Linux OS distributions).
Creating virtual hard disks in virtual machines. Before you start working with a virtual machine, you must create a virtual hard drive, on which the operating system will subsequently be installed.
Replication of similar systems.
If installation is necessary operating system and software on computers with the same hardware configuration.
A more rational step would be to install and configure the OS and software on one computer, after which an image is created along with all system settings and installed on other computers.

The .ISO format is the most popular disk image format, but has the disadvantage of lacking support for multi-session data.

Other popular formats are the .DMG and .IMG formats, as well as the proprietary .MDS/.MDF (Alcohol, Daemon Tools), NRG (Nero Burning ROM), .VCD (VirtualCD) and others.

Overview of programs for creating a disk image

Alcohol 52%

The program settings allow you to:

check the accuracy of data reading from physical devices;

improve the quality of scanning bad sectors;

simultaneous operation with 6 virtual drives;

work with formats: BIN, BWA, BWI, BWS, BWT, CCD, CDI, CUE, ISO, ISZ, NRG, MDS;

DAEMON Tools

As can be seen from the table, for the tasks of the average user, the functionality of the free version is sufficient, which allows you to create and mount everything existing types images and emulate up to 4 drives.

The program has a clear Russified menu.

Ultra ISO

Ultra ISO - this program allows you to create, edit, convert images into various formats(b5i, b5t, b6i, b6t, bin, bwi, bwt, ccd, cdi, cue, daa, dao, dmg, icf, iso, ima, img, isz, lcd, mdf, mds, nrg, pxi, sub, tao , uif, vc4).

In addition to creating images from CDs, it is also possible to create images from hard drives And

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 mounting them (emulating), which significantly reduces disk space and allows you to create backups all necessary files. The main difference between this program and many other similar ones 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 physical wear of all types of disks.
- a convenient and clear interface will make absolutely no one use the program for all categories of users.
- allows you to use all possible image formats.
- provides the ability to copy boot disks, and also makes it possible to protect saved files with a password, which will ensure complete safety to store the file.
In order to be able to use the program, you need to take the following steps.
First you need to download and install the program on your personal computer:

After this, select the desired program components to use and determine the program installation folder. Installation will take just 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 disk drive parameters, writing speed, and location of the new disk image. Select the file for the image and its format. It is advisable to indicate maximum speed reading and, if necessary, you can specify a protection password.

When you have finished selecting the parameters, you need to click on the start button and the image will be created automatically in the previously specified folder.
A fairly convenient interface and ease of use are the main advantages of this program, which is designed to greatly secure and expand the range of capabilities of your disk images to 4 different units, which will replace the need to save disks and fear their failure.

Filecluster.com Pros
- Small and highly stable program.
- Low resource requirements.
- Simple and functional interface...

GIGA.de Mit dem Daemon Tools Lite Download könnt ihr virtuelle Images erstellen, speichern und einbinden sowie virtuelle Laufwerke emulieren.