Virtual cd for windows 10 which is better. Features of creating virtual disks and their application

A lot of users personal computers on the Windows platform, people often ask questions - what are virtual disks and how to create virtual disk. To increase the awareness of our readers on these issues, in this article we will try to fully cover the topic using specific examples.

Also in our article we will look at what is virtual hard disks and where they are used. After familiarizing yourself with the material, our readers will be able to easily create virtual hard drives and image disks in ISO format, as well as mount them onto a virtual device and burn them to DVD without any problems.

Virtual optical drive and its applications

The main purpose of a virtual disk drive is mounting images optical disks. To understand in detail why it is needed, we will look at an example where an image of a disk in ISO format will be mounted on a virtual DVD-ROM. For this example we will use operating Windows system 10.

A nice thing for owners of computers with the Windows 10 operating system is that it already has a virtual DVD-ROM installed. Therefore, Windows 10 owners will not have to use third-party programs to mount images.

To mount an optical disk image into a virtual DVD-ROM, we need the image itself. For example, we will use image with the Linux operating system Ubuntu. Download image of this operating system You can visit its official website http://www.ubuntu.com. In our example we will use the image 64-bit Ubuntu version 15.10, which has a size of 1.1 GB.

Having downloaded the image, you can begin to mount it directly. To do this, right-click on the image file to open the context menu.

The mounted “virtual disk” can be opened and all its contents copied.

As you can see from the example, we mounted an image from the Ubuntu OS on a virtual DVD drive. Essentially, we were able to do almost what we do with a regular and optical disc when we insert it into a DVD drive and open it, only in our version all the components are virtual.

Creating a laserdisc image

In the previous example, we looked at how to open an image disk in a virtual DVD drive. Now let's deal with the situation when you need to create an image of an optical disk. To create an image, we will need the DAEMON Tools Lite program, which must be downloaded and installed. It is also worth noting that in addition to creating different image formats, DAEMON Tools Lite can also mount a huge number of formats into its own virtual DVD drive. After installing the program DAEMON Tools Lite In Explorer you will notice a new drive named ""

This “” is precisely the drive of the program in question DAEMON Tools Lite. In this example, we will create an image of the original installation DVD with the Windows 10 operating system. To make an image from the installation DVD with ten, insert it into the DVD drive. Now let’s run the utility and go to the “ New look».

In the utility window we find the button “ Create an image from disk" and press it. These actions will take us to the image creation window.

In this window, you can select the DVD drive from which the ISO image will be created, and also select the location to save it.

We will also select the image ISO format and confirm the creation by clicking the Start button, which will start creating a DVD image with Windows 10.

After creation, we will receive an ISO image file named “J_CCSA_X86FRE_RU-RU_DV5.iso”, which can be mounted or written to a regular disc and installed new Windows using it.

The example shows how easy it is to burn an image for a virtual DVD-ROM using DAEMON Tools Lite. In the same way, you can burn images for all licensed Windows discs, be it XP or Vista. In addition, you can record images of games or software that will not run without a disc. In addition to the program DAEMON Tools Lite I would like to recommend other popular utilities that can create and allow you to open images of optical disks:

• Alcohol 120%;
• Gizmo Drive;
• WinCDEmu.

It is especially important to use these utilities on an OS that does not have built-in virtual DVD drives, for example, in OS Windows XP. In addition to XP support, each of these programs, including DAEMON Tools Lite, will be able to burn ISO images to DVD disk. In addition to supporting the ISO format, these utilities can mount other formats, including their own, which can be written to regular discs.

Virtual hard disk

Virtual HDD quite often used by IT specialists, as it allows you to solve many problems with backup, virtual machines and testing of various operating systems. Virtual hard disk is a container file that simulates a file structure hard drive .

Since such a disk is a file, it is therefore usually stored on a physical HDD or SSD. Starting with Windows 7, users now have the ability to create and mount a hard disk directly in the operating system.

Let's look at an example of creating a virtual hard disk using Windows 10. First, let's go to the " Execute"using the key combination Win + R and type the following command in it: diskmgmt.msc

This command will take us to the Disk Control Panel.

To create a new virtual HDD, you need to go to the " Action / Create virtual hard disk", which will open a window to create such a disk.

Starting with Windows 10, it became possible to create a disk with the format " VHDX" Unlike the "VHD" format, the " VHDX» can create containers up to 64 terabytes. Let's make our 100 GB virtual hard disk in the new format " VHDX", and also set the switch to dynamic creation mode, in which our disk will grow as it fills.

After setting the parameters of our hard drive, press the OK button, which will allow you to write it to the specified folder on the screw. Once created, the output will be a virtual hard disk named “virtual disk.vhdx”. From the image below you can see that our disk was automatically mounted, but it is still not visible in the system.

For the system to see our VHDX disk, it must be initialized. This can be done by right-clicking on the VHDX disk and selecting “ Initialize disk».

In the window that appears, do not change anything and click OK.

Now the simplest thing left is to select a file system and letter for our disk. To do this, go to it and select the item “ Create a simple volume».

After this, a wizard will launch in which you need to assign a drive letter and select a file system. After completing the wizard, the virtual hard disk will appear in Explorer.

From the example it is clear that creating a virtual HDD using OS tools is very simple, so we hope that you will no longer have the question of how to create a virtual hard disk. I would also like to note that with the created VHDX disk you can do the following operations:

• Encrypt it using BitLocker;
• Install an additional OS on it;
• Move and open it on another computer;
• Connect it to a virtual machine.

Computers based on the Windows XP operating system, which is still quite popular, do not support VHD drives. But don’t be upset, because in the utility we reviewed earlier DAEMON Tools Lite there is support for VHD disks and it Fully compatible with Windows XP.

Using a VHD disk in a virtual machine

Let's create a virtual machine based on the Windows XP operating system using the VirtualBox program. At the virtual machine creation stage for XP, you will be prompted to create or attach a virtual hard disk that will be used for Windows installations XP on it.

At this point we can attach the VHD disk that we will create with using Windows 10. Therefore, we will try to attach our 30 GB VHD container, which we made in the top ten. After creating the virtual machine, you can view the attached VHD disk in its settings.

If there is little space in the virtual machine on XP, you can always attach new VHD virtual hard disk. Besides, you can connect containers with various file data to the virtual machine for XP. You can use virtual machine from other software products in the same way. For example, VHD containers can be installed on VMware Workstation products.

Bottom line

From the material reviewed, it is clear that the use of virtual drives and hard drives helps solve many problems much better, especially since even a novice PC user can figure out how to create them. We hope that our material will help our readers better understand the question of how to create a virtual disk and how to use it for work.

Video on the topic

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.

Virtual disk- an analogy of 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 understood what the use of virtual drives gives us, let’s move on to the actual 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 an official or any other source. It is advisable to use 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, this is where we can choose 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. It will be revealed to us new disk with the recorded file Pactioner.php:

Results

We have reviewed theoretical basis virtual drives and disks, figured out 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.

Thanks to this program, you can obtain images from any optical disks and emulate them onto virtual disks. Also, the Virtual CD functions allow you to remove Tages protection from disks for full use of their contents. For example, this application is suitable for creating images computer games, licensed programs and films. If necessary, you can burn any images to CDs. To do this, it is enough to have on your computer installed program Virtual SD. Download it for free new version will be useful for gamers and users of licensed programs.

Possibilities:

• creating CD images;
• adding virtual drives;
• increasing the service life of physical drives;
• burning images to CDs.

Principle of operation:

so, we downloaded Virtual CD for free and installed its trial version on the computer. In the start menu of this application, you can obtain images of any contents of CDs, burn them to optical media and mount these images to virtual drives. As for the latter, up to 23 such virtual devices can be created. In addition, this application allows you to bypass Tages protection against copying data.

Note that you can install Virtual SD on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.

Pros:

• high-quality creation of images of any contents of optical discs;
• writing data to disk;
• the program bypasses Tages disk protection;
• the ability to download a free Virtual CD to your computer;
• simple interface.

Minuses:

• for the Russian-language menu you need to install a localizer;
• The program is free for the first 30 days.

The Virtual CD program is well suited for creating images of any content on CDs. In addition, the application allows you to bypass Tages protection and write any images to optical media.

By default, the program has an English menu. To change the interface language, you need to download the localization language.

), 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. Exists whole group protection based on emulation of disk damage. Standard way you will not be able to read its contents, since the interesting place a read error will occur. 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 exact copy CD/DVD media.

Alcohol 120% contains an image search tool 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 optical disc burning modes.

On official page project, 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 ours. 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 what is described in the latest articles software for illegal purposes. And this is not a matter of high morality. Just take care of yourself and your health.

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 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. Most modest opportunities the DAEMON Tools Lite edition has no 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 required quantity 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 image window is designed to perform various kinds operations on images, and the drive 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 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% - $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 intended for quick launch main components of the program. Located on the right side of the main program window horizontal panels- These 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 "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 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. 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 across different modules, and total number There are a lot of different settings. If we're talking about about adding existing image files to the collection, 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.