Many companies today release software for download, trial and use via ISO Images (both DVD and CD formats). Microsoft is one such company and much of what I download from them is locked away in these easily-burnable files.
The big downside for me in this model though is that most of the time I simply want to install what's in the ISO image and don't require physical media. To resolve this problem many software packages exist (for Windows XP/Vista machines) but some are better then others.
Virtual Clone Drive
One such package is Virtual Clone Drive by SkySoft. This is an excellent and free piece of software that makes Mounting and Un-mounting ISO images as simple as clicking on them. Here are the features listed for this software from the official website:
Features
- Supports all common image formats such as ISO, BIN, CCD
- Supports up to 8 virtual drives at the same time
- Easy to use - just double-click an image file to mount as a drive
- Virtual CloneDrive is freeware, you may use it at no cost.
Even though their website only lists support for Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP I have found this software to work perfectly (so far) in Windows Vista.
(I don't have SP1 installed yet for Vista but hope it wont break this software)
4 comments:
You can also use the shareware version of WinRar to extract the files from the ISO image.
http://www.rarlab.com/
Good point, i forgot about that utility.
There are a lot of good free and/or open source products in this area and im sure more can be suggested.
I have been using and recommending Daemon Tools (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/), but I'll check this one out. You can never have too many virtual drive emulators. ;-) Thanks for the info.
I have used Daemon Tools for a long time and it does work as advertised.
My one big complaint is that the installers includes weird stuff like toolbars that you have to opt out of, and that really turns me off.
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