Best Free CD-DVD Emulation Software

While it's true that this category (at this writing) needs an editor, what's here, now, in the meantime, is nevertheless pretty good, generally speaking. Whomever was the last editor obviously left this page in pretty good shape. Thanks for that.

I'd only add a few things...

Gizmo Drive is actually (or at least CAN be) a much larger pain in the rear than it's likely worth to most users. There's a lot of extra garbage included with it... much of it irritating and misbehaving. I remember once getting so upset at Gizmo and its sometimes odd behavior that I literally screamed out loud, just before I uninstalled it forever.

Virtual Clone Drive is good, but it insinuates itself into the Windows OS in a weird and hard-to-completely-remove manner. It's also not really as generally controllable as it really needs to be.

I confess to not knowing as much about Furius as I would really need to know in order to comment on it; but from what I've read, there's little that's particularly special about it, though it does seem reliable and stable. I think I once tested it; and if memory serves, I think it was, in part, the GTK relationship that put me off. But I'd have to go back and re-test to say, for sure. It's also for Linux, in any case; and this place tends to be more Windows-centric. It's not really a player, then, in this discussion.

MagicDisc is quite probably the best-of-breed of the reviewed tools, though; and I say that simply because it does one thing that the other don't, to wit: In addition to handling all the common image formats, it also handles that weird unique one that the commercial MagicISO product is capable of creating, and which only MagicISO (and also MagicDisc) can handle. I originally didn't think it was an issue, but then I started encountering a lot of ISO image files which even the commercial PowerISO couldn't open; and when I researched it a little, I learned about that unique MagicISO-specific format that some people use to create their ISO files; and of the freeware products, only MagicDisc can read them. So I standardized on MagicDisc for that reason, alone. Along the way, though, I discovered that MagicDisc is a credible, reliable, stable, highly configurable/controllable tool in its own right... capable of doing what all the others can do, PLUS read the unique MagicISO format. (To be clear, MagicISO can create normal ISO files, too. I'm simply saying that in addition, MagicISO seems to be capable of creating an ISO version that's unique to it, and so of the freeware products out there, only MagicDisc can read it... hence the reason I know use it exclusively for virtual disc purposes).

Another tool: The folks who make the freeware (and EXCELLENT, I should add) "HD Decryptor" (which, incidentally, when married with something like the freeware "ImgBurn," is, combined, basically the same as -- or at least roughly equivalent to -- the commercial "DVDFab" product) now make a freeware virtual drive tool called "DVD Fab Virtual Drive"...

http://www.dvdfab.com/virtual_drive.htm

...which, from my very preliminary testing, seems quite nice. It's not as feature/configuration rich as some of the others; and it's got some DVDFab-specific stuff going on in it; but it's a nevertheless potent, straightforward, stable, does-what-it-says-it-will-do tool that's made by one of the best-at-what-it-does companies on the planet... worth checking-out.

Finally, other commenters, here, lament that there's no mention, here, of virtual drive tools which are capable of having ISO (and other image formats) "burned" to the virtual drive. Most virtual drive tools allow one to simply "mount" a set of files/folders as a virtual CD or DVD; but being able to "burn" to the virtual drive... that's another matter.

And the reason, just so everyone knows, is because "burning" to a virtual drive is a technologically tall order... much more difficult, as it turns out, than one might imagine. That's why few to none of the virtual drive tools out there even address or attempt it. I won't go into the technological problems, but just trust me when I say that they are many... and that they border on insurmountable across all hardware types and Windows versions.

And let me be clear what I mean by that: For any given Windows version, running on any given hardware, writing code which allows actual "burning" to a virtual drive is very do-able. The problem is that it's so surprisingly hardware and OS-version dependent (which one wouldn't think would be the case, but, go figure) that it's very difficult to write a single piece of software that can "burn" to a virtual drive across all (or even most) computers out there.

Now, that doesn't mean such virtual burner tools don't exist. They do, indeed; and perhaps the best-known of them is a product called "Total Mounter" from KernSafe...

http://www.kernsafe.com/product/totalmounter.aspx

...which is, happily, freeware (though KernSafe also offers commercial products). And on the absolutely MOST COMMON hardware, running a very vanilla and stable Windows version, it actually works fairly well... well enough, in fact, to be worth trying, for most users, just to see how well (or even if) it works. However, it also has some fairly notorious instabilities... and when those are present, the product is virtually unusable. For some, it won't even install properly.

Since said instabilities can result in data loss, I cannot more strongly warn that the person trying-out Total Mounter needs to be really careful and wary; needs to make sure it works properly and reliably across a wide range if conditions before actually relying on it. Assuming one can even get it to install properly, be sure to test it under heavy/stressed CPU, RAM and hard drive I/O conditions, with lots of multi-tasking going on, to make sure that it can really stand-up on one's machine. The word on Total Mounter is that if it can be made to work, it works REALLY well. The problem, of course, is getting it to work in the first place. That's the "notorious instability" part.

See, also, this Gizmo forum thread: http://bit.ly/x4n3AB

That's all I can think of to write on this subject at the moment.

Hope that helps!

New version of Daemon Tools Lite is out, this time you can mount up to 4 DT drives as stated in this review which is for me is more than enough.

You forgot to mention Daemon Tools Lite.
It's free (avoid the installation of toolbar, search and home page change, and at the end of the installation has a pre-checked option to send usage stats).
Daemon Tools Lite has more format support, like .mdx,, .mdf, .mds, etc while Virtual Clone Drive don't.

is there a free cd-dvd virtual burner with on-the-fly compression?

I downloaded WinCDemu on a flash drive. Am I right that I can install it on my flash and then use on any computer I need?

Furius ISO Mount work fine under my Fedora 14 / KDE...good software.

Happy to find it here coz i couldn't find a CD/DVD emulation software under Linux 'til now.

WinCDEmu rocks! You should add it to the list!

In my last Windows installations I tried 3 of the softwares suggested here... Here's my take (in order of appearance in the suggestion list):

Gizmo: bloated crap. Ok, it works, but there are so many extra features that make the interface quite difficult to understand. Unless you are really planning on using the extra features, avoid it.

MagicDisc: I really liked it and used it for a long time. It is lightweight and easy to use. However, a few images I have are giving errors when when trying to mount with it...

Virtual CloneDrive: My latest try, as simple as MagicDisc, can double click on an image to mount, and correctly mounts all my images! Yay! It is my choice for the moment...

I'm surprised that ImDisk isn't included in the list.
http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk

ATTENTION ALL! DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR INSTALL DAEMON ANYMORE! EVER AGAIN! THEY ARE CHEATS!

When you think you have downloaded it, you have actually only downloaded a custom installation program, that in turn does the actual download. During installation, it shows that something called "Babylon" will be installed, UNLESS you do not want that, in which case you can indicate that by removing the (default) check. Continue the installation AND IT IMMEDIATELY INSTALLS BABYLON ANYWAY! The audacity! A full boycott is in order here. Let us show them we do not appreciate behaviour like that.

Be sure to avoid magicdisc's log file being cleaned/deleted.
Or uninstallation process will not work.

The link to the Magicsio page works but the links on that page don't. The download tab gives a version that asks for payment to upgrade from the free version. It says the free version is limited to 300MB (although I think it said that was just for burning).

I am looking for a software that can edit the image files, like (UltraISO) or (MagicISO). means u can use it to add or remove files from the iso image or extract/add the boot info from/to the image, can anyone help me with this?

WinCDEmu works great in Win7 x64! Now I don't need Daemon Tool Lite sitting on my system tray :D, besides that, small download without toolbar and others is awesome :3

Most of this apps is crap. I've used Daemon tools 4.10 for a very long time. I bought new sata optical drive and daemon SPTD drivers were in conflict with DVD-Rom, so I need to remove them. Newer Daemon Tools Lite has the option to choose if you want to install SPTD drivers or not. However they removed option Show icon in tray. Now, you can do that but if you check it, it will auto-start with windows (not good). There should be separate options, one for tray and other for start with OS. 2nd problem is when you try to reinstall DTL. Impossible to uncheck installation of SPTD drivers even if they are removed manually in Device Manager.

VirtualCloneCD- Nice looking but lacking few options such as don't start with windows, exit option in tray and autorun.inf in image will pass undetected after you disable and reanable the drive. You can fix this only with autoruns10 and MS autoplayfix v2.

WinCDEmu has great stealth idea until you decide you don't want to use it anymore or if you try to reinstall. It will leave over 200 entries in your registry, drivers etc. Ex; right-click on iso file will still show options mout in Wincdemu... Crap.

MagicDisks is one impossible to uninstall program. Happens to me and all my friends. You press uninstall but it freezes and that's it.

Most of this apps are crap. Free or not it doesn't matter.

I just tried installing Daemon Tools Lite and could get no further as my antivrus program blocked it straight away with a ' buffer attack' warning.

So I am avoiding this to be safe and will now give gizmo drive a try!

Right now, I wanted to check out the files in a few iso and bin files.

Downloaded daemon tools lite, but for some weird reason it kept adding virtual drives (I did check the settings, everything seemed to be okay). Trying out the slysoft (virtual clone drive)utility and so far so good.

"On the down side, Virtual CloneDrive does not provide other features such as creating images from or burning them to disks."

And here I was thinking that a virtual drive emulator is supposed to do exactly that, and nothing more, unlike some of those other programs which have become bloated and slow with unnecessary clutter no one asked for.

If you want to create images or burn them, you should use a burning program proper such as ImgBurn. Duh.

WinCDEmu is now PORTABLE.
Works great.